Open Education 2017

This presentation explores whether, why, and how Open Educational Practices and Resources (OEP&R) contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South by widening access to education, encouraging educational participation, and fostering empowerment of educators and learners. It does so by highlighting emerging insights from the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South project. ROER4D research focuses on OEP&R activities in three regions: South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. It consists of 18 sub-projects with more than 100 participating researchers and research associates in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. The central question posed is: For whom and under what circumstances can engagement with Open educational Practices and Resources promote social inclusion?



The presentation adopts and develops a conceptual framework advanced by Gidley et al. (2010) which suggests that there are Š—“degreesŠ— of social inclusion characterised by notions of access, participation, and empowerment. This means that inclusion should not be understood as a simple binary yes/no outcome. They argue: Š—“Social inclusion can be understood as pertaining to a nested schema regarding degrees of inclusion. The narrowest interpretation pertains to the neoliberal notion of social inclusion as access; a broader interpretation regards the social justice idea of social inclusion as participation; whilst the widest interpretation involves the human potential lens of social inclusion as empowermentŠ— (Gidley et al., 2010). The framework is used to examine the types of social inclusion emergent in a selection of ROER4D studies and concludes that degrees of social inclusion are discernable in the OEP&R adopted by educators, and to a lesser extent by learners.