This document discusses critical approaches to openness and open education. It notes that open education is complex, contextual, and requires digital capabilities and agency. It emphasizes that a critical discourse is essential and promotes moving from access to equity and justice. It also discusses how critical theory focuses on concrete operations of power and rejects all forms of oppression, injustice, and inequality. Finally, it states that practicing openness is complex, personal, contextual, and continually negotiated.

2. Catherine Cronin, National Forum for the Enhancement
of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education (Ireland)
Martin Weller, The Open University (UK)
Open education: What now?

3. open
Not universally experienced
Complex & contextual
Requires digital capability & agency
Both descriptive & aspirational
Critical discourse is essential
“Move from access to equity & justice”
McMillan Cottom, 2015

4. critical approaches
to openness & open education

5. critical approaches
to openness & open education
critical disposition
“criticism of what exists,
restoring what is being lost,
pointing towards possible
futures; and sometimes…
being criticized ourselves”
(Michael Apple, 1990)

6. critical approaches
to openness & open education
critical disposition
“criticism of what exists,
restoring what is being lost,
pointing towards possible
futures; and sometimes…
being criticized ourselves”
(Michael Apple, 1990)
critical theory
a focus on the concrete
operations of power and a
rejection of all forms of
oppression, injustice,
and inequality
(as in critical pedagogy)

7. www.technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/
Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep

8. Internet Health Report (Mozilla): https://internethealthreport.org/

9. Equity Unbound: http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org

10. Practicing openness is:
Complex
Personal
Contextual
Continually negotiated

12. oer19.oerconf.org

13. Image: CC0 Stijn Swinnen
It has never been more risky
to operate in the open.
It has never been more vital
to operate in the open.
Martin Weller (2016)