Contextual Analyses of Open and Distance Learning Policies in Malawi: Towards the Reconstruction of Distance Education Policies in Public Universities

This study analysed the open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) landscape in Malawi for its current state and guiding policies based on best global practices. It also attempted to understand how the knowledge, attitudes and practices of academics shape implementation and success of ODeL in Malawi. Using interpretive phenomenology and discourse analysis as suggested by Husserl and Heidegger, it established that ODeL, although new within higher education institutions (HEIs) contexts, was increasingly being accepted amidst staid challenges. The study also established that HEIs in Malawi were offering ODeL without any specialised ODeL policies. This is contrary to the recommendations by the SADC and UNESCO ROSA 2020 studies, which urged African governments and HEIs to design policies based on continental, regional and national instruments to ensure credible and transferable qualifications. It also revealed that the available policies were base, inconsistent and unstructured, due to a lack of relevant knowledge by the framers and dogmatic institutional policies. It further established that three of the six public universities had unratified draft ODeL policies while the other three had nothing to show. This exposed ODeL students to multilayered epistemological injustices in society. It recommended that HEIs should expedite policy designing processes since HEIs are increasing their enrollments yearly amidst minimalist state policies. Minimalism has thus turned HEIs into neocapitalist organisations whose aim is education massification, commodification and profitisation. This then calls for custom-made policies that will regulate ODeL processes and practices to ensure that students receive equitable and epistemologically just education.