Openness in Education: Claims, Concepts, and Perspectives for Higher Education

Openness in Education: Claims, Concepts, and Perspectives for Higher Education
Theo Hug (Innsbruck / A) Education is Relation not Output? - International Conference at the Linnaeus University in Växjö / Sweden May 17-19, 2016 1
Theo Hug
Openness in Education: Claims, Concepts,
and Perspectives for Higher Education
Workshop at the International Conference on Education is Relation not Output? - Scenes of
Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition at Linnaeus University in Växjö /Sweden on May 17, 2016

Overview
 Warm up and getting to know
 Points of departure
 OE brainstorming – hands-on exercise
 Reflections and critical perspectives
 Perspectives for Higher Education
 Conclusions

Points of Departure
 Opening up Education, OE and OER: new policy statements,
themes and developments
 MOOCs and OE are on the agenda in many countries and
educational institutions all over the world, however, hardly
in mainstream educational theory and philosophy
 Variety of types of MOOCs and understandings
of OE and OER as well as openness and education
 ‘Opening up Education’ – traditional motives and
new claims, and extensive historical amnesia
Interposed question: What progress
has been made on former initiatives?
 wide range of concepts and metaphors
https://www.mooc-list.com/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/
Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg
http://emoocs2016.eu/
http://imlf.mobi/

‘open’ & ‘education’ – brainstorming examples for
characterizations, concepts, understandings
Open
Education

‘open’ & ‘education’ – A bit of a taste
at the crossroads of interpretations of interpretations of …
Open
Education
without
barriers
allowing for
passage
broad minded free permeable tbc
training easy to access
eligibility
certificates
free choice of
material
no or low
monetary costs
coming and going
learning in
formal contexts
no eligibility
assessments
authorization
transformative
learning
self-organized learning
revising and
reusing OER
self-learning
self-
empowerment
crediting open
learning, self-
improvement
critical literacy
educational commons,
"edupunk"
sharing / re-
distributing content
teaching teaching as
learning
professional
growth
democratic
orientation
fair use,
(re-)use of OER
team-teaching
lesson, class low-threshold
access
skipping classes
global
education
lessons at no
(obvious) charge
"flipped classroom"
formation
(Bildung)
free choice of
educational
material
social mobility
enabling self-
determined
processes
personal enrichment,
education for its own
sake
multiple choices for
individuals in the
course of education
upbringing
(Erziehung)
anarchic
education
adequate
bonding
personal
maturation
liberal education
intercultural
education
tbc

Discussion
 Reflecting commonalities and differences
 Considering relevances in the context of (higher) education
 Critical perspectives
 ad hoc
 critical voices “from within”
 further critical perspectives

Critical perspectives 1/2
 under-theorisation of the notions of ‘openness’ and ‘freedom’, rejection and privileging
of institutional structures, missing pedagogy, assumptions of autonomy and self-
direction, alignment with the needs of capital (Knox 2013)
 lack of theoretical foundation, terminological fuzziness, economization of education and
orientations towards market needs, weak forms of sharing (Hug 2014)
 assumptions of self-motivation, expectations on media technologies (Missomelius 2014)
 another aspect based on a selection of peer-reviewed journals:
“Despite many research studies using publicly available data from a MOOC for research
purposes, only a few papers have considered the ethical aspects of such use.”
(Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013)
 example for a conclusion from a systematic review:
“A rich, original idea that started strongly, with high expectations based
on the innovative potential of openness, has, over the years, gradually
becoming a mechanical formula with little genuine creativity but more
focused on reaching global audiences rather than delivery through
traditional academic institutions.” (Chiappe et al. 2015, p. 14)

Critical perspectives 2/2
 unsystematic list of critical aspects of OER at EdTechPost, such as:
too content centric, culturally imperialistic, not effective, not open enough, a marketing
ploy, not sustainable, undermining the publishing industry, undermining institutional
education, etc.
http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/Critiques+of+Open+Education+Resources
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93093769@N05/ https://www.wordans.at/wvc-1322847861/wordansfiles/
product_previews/2011/12/2/2807/2807_650.jpg

Matters of concern on various levels
 conceptual level – weaknesses in conceptualizing and theorizing key issues,
media history and tech promises as blind spots, reductionist descriptions
 institutional level – legal issues, TEL in formal institutions is commonly based
on a rigid vertical hierarchy, everyday media cultures vs. pedagogy in higher ed
 learning level – learners' motivations and goals for learning are taken for
granted, concepts for support and coaching are missing in many cases
 societal level – cultural industry, issues of societal, organizational and
generational learning are underestimated, ditto intergenerational education
and reasons for reform resistance in educational systems
 economic level – business models, actual costs for institutions and forms of
capital involved, rather colonialist practices than reflections on economies of
the commons (cf. http://ecommons.eu/)
 technological level – the hidden work of algorithms, FLOSS and/vs. proprietary
software, issues of data privacy and making use of collections of big data

Openness towards different knowledge cultures
 ‘Opening up education’ is an idea relevant throughout the history of
education
 Notions of openness have been and will be at the heart of higher
education and academic knowledge cultures
 Ambivalences and conflicting aspects
 Paradoxes related to key terms like ‘autonomy,’ ‘openness,’ ‘connectedness,’ etc.
 rejection and criticism of institutional structures and incorporation of favored tools
and structures into the educational system (cf. Knox 2013)
 legal frameworks do not match concepts of OER – in other words: “while providing
access and promoting ‘sharing’, they effectively apply the ‘all rights reserved’
approach” (Botero Cabrera & Gaitán Bohórquez 2009)
 new business models and for-profit education for all? (cf. Daniel 2012)
 diffuse governance of the scholary communication system (cf. Borgman 2010)
 new mediated and globalized knowledge dynamics and knowledge scapes

Openness towards different understandings
and forms of knowledge - conceptualizations as related to
 traditions, for example, doxa, epistêmê, technê, phronêsis, gnosis, sophia
(cf. Glasersfeld 1997, p. 198)
 basic understandings such as justified belief, true opinion, tested information,
socially situated construction, networked concepts, symbolic representation, ability
to act, cluster of ideational models, classified information, commodity, etc.
 forms like experience-oriented everyday, scientific and mythical knowledge,
common sense forms of knowing and knowing in arts and academic contexts, etc.
 localization, for example, in minds or heads, bodies, objects to be treated, social
structures or networks, in the “cloud” or “vanishing into things” (Allen 2015), etc.
 modes of creation: traditional disciplinary modes; inter- and transdiciplinary and
economically driven modes, trans-cultural programs and globalized research
 implicit dimensions like “knowing how“ (Ryle 1946), “tacit knowledge“ (Polanyi
1958), inaccessible memories, being unaware, not-knowing or unknowingly,
unconscious dynamics, “untaught knowledge“ (Neuweg 2001), impossible-to-
articulate knowledge, discreetness, reticence, and relations to explicit dimensions

Openness - Perspectives for Higher Education 1/2
 Openness towards structural changes – wins and losses on all levels
 throughout history – universitas est semper reformanda – and ongoing
transformation of the scientific system (outsourcing of technical universities in the
19th century, non-university research, universities of applied sciences, etc.)
Example 1: “Third Space” Example 2: “Innovation from within”
Cf. Zellweger Moser & Bachmann 2010, p. 1
http://www.zfhe.at/index.php/zfhe/article/view/9/252 Cf. Peschl & Fundneider (2008)

Openness - Perspectives for Higher Education 2/2
 Openness towards critical thinking
 from general claims for critical thinking as an indispensable element
of scientific innovation and established critical approaches to forms of
meta-critique (Latour 2004, Hoy 2004)
 contextualist perspectives (cf. Goor et al. 2004, Heyting 2001; 2003)
in search of ways between Scylla of epistemological foundationalism and
Charybdis of arbitrary positings (Setzungen)
 polylogical research allowing for extensive reciprocal influences of various
positions and promoting situations in which all basic concepts, assumptions,
starting points and methods are debatable (cf. Wimmer 2001)
 Openness towards post-humanist challenges as well as increased
complexity and contingency

Conclusion
 There is a need for discourse assessment and for rethinking the public-
private nexus, economies of educational commons, and the future of
education for all in non-reductionist ways
 As to education and autonomy through scholarship both a manifold of
purposes of education as well as forms of education which are not intended
for specific purpose are to be considered.
 Overcoming the opposition between technophobic humanities and techno-
euphoric engineering and natural sciences.
 Dealing with the ongoing reorganization of academic tribes, territories and
disciplines beyond epistemological essentialism (cf. Müller 2014, Trowler
2014)
 Considering both The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962) and
the Revolution of Scientific Structures (Müller 2016)

Openness in Education: Claims, Concepts, and Perspectives for Higher Education

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