Presentation by Maha Bali, Associate Professor, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo, Egypt, at the 2019 European Distance Learning Week's fifth-day webinar on "The journey to social justice and openness in ODL" - 15 November 2019 Recording of the discussion is available: https://eden-online.adobeconnect.com/pqnnhlmaq3ho/ & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK_tCGMUL-8

1. Intentions & Realities of Social Justice in OEP
Maha Bali, PhD @bali_maha

2. Intentions & Realities
Goal: Discuss how some Open Educational Practices can
fall short of their social justice rhetoric/intentions, and
how they might move closer to it.

3. These slides: http://bit.ly/EDLWMAHA
(anyone can comment)

4. OPPORTUNITYISNOWHEREOPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE

5. Social Justice & Decoloniality work inspired by
• Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter (2019)
• Lambert (2019)
• Adam, Bali, Hodgkinson-Williams, & Morgan (2019)
• Bali, Caines, De Waard, Hogue & Friedrich (2019),
• Andreotti et al (2015)

6. Nancy Fraser’s social justice
● Economic (maldistribution)
● Cultural (misrecognition)
● Political (misframing)

7. Reform/Redressing Injustice Can Be
1. Affirmative/Ameliorative (Fraser) / Soft (Andreotti) - i.e.
not addressing root causes of injustice
2. Transformative (Fraser) / Radical (Andreotti) i.e.
addresses root causes of injustice
BUT REFORM CAN ALSO BE
1. Negative
2. Neutral
The same reform can have different impact on different groups or in different
contexts

8. Coloniality vs Colonialism - 1
“Coloniality... refers to long-standing patterns of power that
emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture,
labour, intersubjectivity relations, and knowledge
production well beyond the strict limits of colonial
administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism.
(Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243)

9. Coloniality vs Colonialism - 2
“[Coloniality] is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for
academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common
sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self,
and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a
way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time
and every day.” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243)

10. Image by Josie
Fraser, CC-BY,
shared on Twitter at
OER17 conferenceImage by Alan Levine, CC-BY, shared on
Twitter at DML conference, 2016
Virtually Connecting

11. Virtually Connecting
• Purpose for addressing:
– Economic, cultural and political injustice
• Critiques
– For whom can it be negative?
– In what context would it be transformative?
• Intentionally Equitable Hospitality

12. Wikipedia - 1
Anyone can edit, but this really means
● Anyone who can afford giving time
● Anyone who has the digital literacies
○ Now easier
● Anyone who understands the standards for what
counts as credible knowledge
○ Who sets these standards? Reproducing hegemonic
knowledge
○ Who polices those standards? Majority of editors are white
males

13. Wikipedia - 2
● Which knowledge has priority? Is more prevalent
● In what ways do these processes reproduce unequal
power relations?
○ Only one version, consensus, discussion can get aggressive
in the background. Consider Women's Ways of Knowing
○ Differences between different language versions
● Feminist and local hackathons as resistance
● But what about the standards & processes?

14. Collaborative Annotation
● Pedagogical value
● Content and process focus
● For whom might it be negative or neutral?
● How can it be more social-justice oriented?
○ #MarginalSyllabus

15. How can we rethink Open Educational
Practices so that they are better able to
redress social injustices in practice?
Importance of parity of participation

16. Thank You
@bali_maha
bali@aucegypt.edu