Open at the Margins – Critical Perspectives on Open Education | PressBooks

This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education. It includes the work of 43 diverse authors whose perspectives challenge the dominant hegemony.

Editors: Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin, Laura Czerniewicz, Robin DeRosa, and Rajiv Jhangiani

Contributors: Taskeen Adam, Nicole Allen, Tel Amiel, Tutaleni Asino, Javiera Atenas, Maha Bali, Naomi Barnes, Chris Bourg, Siko Bouterse, Autumm Caines, Lorna M. Campbell, Karen Cangialosi, Amy Collier, Catherine Cronin, Laura Czerniewicz, Robin DeRosa, Simon Ensor, Christian Friedrich, Chris Gilliard, Sarah Hare, Christina Hendricks, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, Rajiv Jhangiani, Rachel Jurinich Mattson, Suzan Koseoglu, Caroline Kuhn H., Jim Luke, Jaime Marsh, Billy Meinke-Lau, Jess Mitchell, Matthew Moore, Tannis Morgan, Judith Pete, Paul Prinsloo, Tara Robertson, sava saheli singh, Sherri Spelic, Bonnie Stewart, Jesse Stommel, Samantha Streamer Veneruso, Adele Vrana, Sukaina Walji, and Audrey Watters

From the editors' introduction:

The open education movement has made significant progress since it was first explicitly articulated less than two decades ago. Its provenance is often dated back to the announcement of open courseware at a US university, MIT. Since then it has made great strides, especially in the realm of open textbooks, and these especially in the global north. Among its most inspiring developments has been a broadening and refocusing of the conversation to include open pedagogy and open educational practices (OEP), including approaches that extend beyond those that directly involve OER.

Open education is at a critical juncture now. It has moved on from its northern roots and is increasingly being challenged from its own periphery. At the same time, it finds itself marginalised and under threat in an educational sector infiltrated by corporate interests.

It is our contention that rather than bunkering down, becoming blinkered or even complacent, that the voices from the periphery should be amplified. We argue, like Mbembe (2015), for a more open critical pluriversalism – a task which he points out involves the radical re-founding of our ways of thinking and one which embraces via a horizontal strategy of openness a dialogue among different epistemic traditions.

Open education agendas are not simply being “openwashed” as has been observed by many; our concern is that that they have become watered down. It is clear that questions about equity and social justice need to be reasserted at this time.  It is also a moment to question power relations within broader open education networks. When MIT (and others) opened their courseware to the world, it was a one-to-many form of engagement, premised on offering their educational solutions to “others” who are viewed as recipients rather than equal partners in the endeavor.

Therefore, we are cautious about rhetoric concerning equity, diversity, and inclusion, asserting that these only have meaning when concomitant processes are genuinely embraced to avoid further marginalizing the marginalized.

In this book, voices from the margins are made central, voices that ask important questions, such as…

• Is the open education movement even a single movement? If so, what binds it together?
• What does it mean for something to be open? Who gets to decide what is “open” enough? Or for whom it is open?
• Can one use closed means to achieve open ends?
• Should some things never be open? If so, how are these things determined?
• How can one reconcile concerns about data privacy, particularly when concerning student data, against a desire to promote open scholarship and open pedagogy?
• How can one ensure that accessibility is not forgotten during conversations about access?
• How can one reconcile the rights and agency of authors against specific open licensing requirements attached to OER-related grants?
• What academic labor issues are currently obscured in the open education movement, and how can OER and OEP paradigms and initiatives resist the exploitation of academic labor?
• How can one ensure that the movement does not fall prey to blind techno-solutionism?
• Can a primary obligation to shareholders ever be reconciled with a duty to students?

These are important questions, critical in both senses of the word. However, they have rarely been articulated, debated, or welcomed into the foreground. Which brings us to this volume, which seeks to center these discussions, acknowledging and openly addressing the serious pitfalls of open education that can derail its great promise.