Visionary, Philosophic, Psychological, and Social Foundations of Open and Distance Education

This paper aims to investigate the visionary، philosophic، psychological، and social foundations of open and distance education. This qualitative research is based on the document reading methods which is consisted of the librarian and digital secondary resources in the era of distance education. The sampling has been done via targeted methods in choosing amongst the existing and available sources. The data collection depends on endless memoranda to keep track of the data reviewed in order to be examined through expository –analysis methods. The findings have revealed that the outstanding foundations of distance education lie upon the scientific basics (explanations، visions، and the four element specifications of distant education)، philosophical basics with concern of build-oriented educational philosophy (ontology، epistemology، and axiology)، social basics (socialization، norms، roles، interactions، relationship، communication، and groups)، and psychological basics (motivation، concern and caution، concentration and cognition، data process، critical thinking and problem solving). They all have specific functions in four elements of distance education، the organization of distance education، the content of distance education، and last but not least، the environment of distant education.