A Social Justice Framework for Understanding Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.56059/jl4d.v5i3.312

Keywords:

Open Educational Resources, Open Educational Practices, social justice, Global South

Abstract

At the heart of the open educational resources (OER) movement is the intention to provide affordable access to culturally relevant education to all. This imperative could be described as a desire to provide education in a manner consistent with social justice which, according to Fraser (2005), is understood as “parity of participation”. Drawing on her concept of social justice, we suggest a slight modification of Fraser’s framework for critically analysing ways in which the adoption and impact of OER and their undergirding open educational practices (OEP) might be considered socially just. We then provide illustrative examples from the cross-regional Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project (2014-2017) to show how this framework can assist in determining in what ways, if at all, the adoption of OER and enactment of OEP have responded to economic inequalities, cultural inequities and political exclusions in education. Furthermore, we employ Fraser’s (2005) concepts to identify whether these social changes are either “affirmative” (i.e., ameliorative) or “transformative” in their economic, cultural and political effects in the Global South education context.

Author Biographies

Cheryl Ann Hodgkinson-Williams, University of Cape Town

Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. ). She was the Principal Investigator of the IDRC-funded international Research on OER for Development (ROER4D) project (2013-2017).

Henry Trotter, Researcher, University of Cape Town

Henry Trotter is a researcher at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, and worked for the Research on OER for Development (ROER4D) project.

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Published

2018-11-19

How to Cite

Hodgkinson-Williams, C. A., & Trotter, H. (2018). A Social Justice Framework for Understanding Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.56059/jl4d.v5i3.312

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 3 (2018): ISSUE 3

Section

Invited Articles

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Received 2018-09-14
Accepted 2018-10-09
Published 2018-11-19