This document outlines a proposed participatory action research study on developing an open educational resources (OER) model in Karnataka, India. The study will involve 50 teachers and 10 teacher educators across 5 regions who will engage in iterative cycles of planning, action, observation, reflection and problem-solving to collaboratively adapt, create and curate OERs. The goals are to understand how this approach can promote OER adoption, contribute to pedagogy, and produce local OERs. The research will occur over 2 years using workshops, interviews and analyses to address questions around encouraging wider OER use and the capacities needed to support such processes within formal education systems. Outputs will include research papers, a final report and connections to policy

1. ROERD
IT for Change (www.ITforChange.net)
Bangalore, India
Cape Town
December 2013

2. Participatory action research
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Participatory action research (PAR) seeks to understand
the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and
reflectively. This long-standing tradition emphasizes
principles of collective inquiry and experimentation
grounded in experience and social history.
Within a PAR process, "communities of inquiry and
action evolve and address questions and issues that are
significant for those who participate as co-researchers"
(Reason and Bradbury, 2008)

3. Participatory Action Research
“Whether and how,
a bottom-up approach,
where participants
('embedded' within a 'community of learning')
collaboratively create
contextual resources,
can promote an
effective OER model”

4. Context
Crisis in Teacher Education - Number and Quality
OER as a method – North Centric
Quality of OER & Adoption of OER
(also further marginalise the South)
Proposed research
Educational & Socio-cultural aspects
Location – Subject Teacher Forum Programme,
Karnataka state of India (Teachers from around 1500
high schools, working with around 40 TE institutions)

5. Pedagogy and content
Elliot W. Eisner - “Like the systole and diastole of the beating
heart, curriculum and teaching are the most fundamental
aspects. ...No curriculum teaches itself, it always must be
mediated
Israel Scheffler - The transmission model of education
coupled with the drive for increased efficiency tends to foster
the view of the teacher as a minor technician within an
industrial process.
Elliot G. Mishler - Meaning in Context: Is There Any Other
Kind? Harvard Educational Review Issue
Prof Krishna Kumar – Text book culture

6. Research objectives
To study how collaborative and active OER adaptationcuration-creation processes can be embedded within a
community of practitioners
To understand how such a OER model can contribute to
pedagogical processes
To explore how such a model can locally produce OERs
that can diversify and enrich the global OER movement.

7. Research Questions
How would participatory processes supporting a
community of learners in active adaptation-creation of
OER encourage wider OER adoption?
What individual, institutional and systemic capacities
affect such OER processes?
How can such a community of professionals work in a
formal government / public system that may be
compartmentalised and hierarchical?

8. Methodology
Research will work with a sample of 50 teachers and 10
teacher-educators across 5 diverse socio-cultural regions
in Karnataka, across a period of two years in a
participatory action research mode
Selection of 60 on a stratified sampling basis,
considering age/experience, gender, {classes and
subjects taught}, comfort with ICTs

9. Methodology
The core group would engage in iterative cycles of
planning, action, observation, reflection, specifying
learning and further problematisation,
using a variety of tools
Workshops, focused group discussions, structured
interviews and {surveys}, mailing list analyses, content
analyses of resources (created and adapted by the
teachers and teacher-educators).

10. Activity plan
Initial planning and development of a shared framework
workshops to set-up structures and processes, a webbased platform
Facilitating the action research, including resource
access-creation-curation-adoption
Periodic workshops, interviews, FGDs of teachers,
teacher educators and administrators
Ongoing documentation
Periodic reviews and interactions with the ROERD
Possible national workshop for review and for connecting
to policy makers (combined with partners)
Study closure

11. Outcomes/Outputs
Short research papers
Final Research Report
Connections with policy makers in state and federal
levels
(National Workshop for sharing and connecting)
Model of OER – participatory, contextual, sustainable
Local OERs

12. Collaborations
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Karnataka Education – DSERT (Apex body for
curriculum development and teacher education)
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NCERT and RIE (National bodies for same)
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ROERD
–
Columbia
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Teacher education projects
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Systemic / Policy advocacy projects

13. Thank You
● Guru@ITforChange.net
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