Distance education as a 'we–ness': a case for uBuntu as a theoretical framework

Abstract

'Education-for-me' could, epistemologically considered, probably be classified as a typically Western concept where the individual within distance education focuses on individualised 'education-for-me', thus making the individual the most important ordering principle. African - specifically Batswana - ACE (Advanced Certificate in Education) students do not regard distance education as a solitary activity or individualised 'education-for-me'. It appears from the qualitative data reported in this article that, for the African and more specifically the Batswana ACE student, distance education is rather a 'we-ness' in which they experience the existential yearning to live and observe the anthropological epistemological principle of communality and collectivity, in matters also related to their academic lives. In the ideologically based anthropological epistemological view of 'communality' of the Batswana ACE student, man is regarded primarily as a social being, focused socially essentially on the reality surrounding him/her, and growing into a belonghesion towards a communal unity within a particular distance education community as aim