Epistmological Viewpoints About Teaching-Learning Strategies in Open Learning and Distance Education's System

Epistemology as one of the important branches of philosophy, discusses the nature, issues, sources, and limitations of knowledge, as well as the criteria for evaluating it. Epistemology therefore may offer teachers varied views about reality and knowledge (which are the products of education). About the relationship between epistemology and open and distance education, it is said that different epistemological assumptions, based on different approaches have somehow influenced the components of the educational system such as teachers student, curriculum, and teaching learning strategies throushout the period that different generations of open education and distance education were being formed. This article tries to identify the relationship between epistemology and open and distance educations through discussing on of dominant epistemological and psychological approaches in every one of the three generations of educational system that have somehow influenced the ahitude and function of the instructors. The major approaches to epistemology dissenssed here are; 1) positivism, 2) interpretivism and 3) critical. A general profiles of open and distance, education is depicted and implications of epistemological viewpoints in relation to teaching-learning strategies within the framework of the three generators of open and distance education are examined.