Call for papers - Open Education and Social Justice (Special Collection: Deadline June 1, 2019) | Journal of Interactive Media in Education

Abstract due 1st June, Papers due 1st December 2019 for March-April 2020 publication.

While Open Education has long focused on sharing and removing a range of historical, education and financial barriers, there is a renewed interest given the role that technology plays in enhancing access or increasing inequality. It has become clear that technology is not sufficient to transform educational opportunities for many global learners. Indeed huge recent investments in free MOOC courses may advantage the already educated and relatively privileged, “and not, as originally envisaged, the global community of disadvantaged learners who have no access to good higher education” (Laurillard, 2016, p. 1). Furthermore, access is only one aspect of open education and social justice.

Open education has recently taken a critical turn, with a renewed interest in social justice approaches for the benefit of students traditionally excluded from and within education systems. For example, the OER19 conference theme is “Recentering Open: Critical and global perspectives” and it presents a range of speakers, sessions and workshops asking “back to basics” questions such as “Why open?”, “Open for whom, and whose interests are served?”

Social justice actions aim to enable equal and diverse participation. It provides a valuable lens for redressing inequalities in provision of open and distance learning. More formally, social justice can be defined as: a process and also a goal to achieve a fairer society which involves actions guided by the principles of redistributive justice, recognitive justice or representational justice (developed from Fraser, 1995; Keddie, 2012; Young, 1997).

This special edition invites authors to submit research into social justice approaches to digitally enabled (distance or blended) open education. The special edition is scoped to cover lifelong, adult learning and Higher Education settings. Questions that authors might like to address include:

• What does a social justice approach to open education look like? How is it different from other approaches to open education?
• Who benefits from social justice approaches to open education, and in which ways?
• How have social justice principles been realised/instantiated in higher education practices, classes and systems?
• How can thinking about open and distance learning in terms of social justice improve program design and therefore improve outcomes for students?
• How can open technologies amplify redistributive, recognitive and/or representational justice in your context?

Submissions to JIME should have a clear educational focus or application, and should go beyond the “potential” of open education to share contextualised projects, outcomes, empirical and theoretical results. We encourage rich case studies that acknowledge the specifics of different global contexts, the challenges for particular learners and how histories of exclusion can be disrupted.

Submissions are expected to advance knowledge in the field of open education conceptually and/or empirically. Contributors should take account of JIME’s guidelines for submissions. This OER19 workshop collaboration paper provides some suggestions and social justice literature examples.

DEADLINES

Abstract submission deadline: 1st June 2019 Expected confirmation of acceptance: mid July 2019 Development of full papers, constructive peer feedback on drafts: August – November 2019 Submission of full papers: 1st December 2019 Corrections for accepted manuscript due: 1 February 2020 Expected issue publication date: March-April 2020 (coinciding with OER20)