Preface

Tiffani Tijerina, Texas Tech University and Kennesaw State University

When BJ and Corey at the University of North Georgia Press approached me in late 2021 seeking recommendations of someone with the expertise and interest in editing a monograph series on open pedagogy, my response was something along the lines of “um… yeah, me!” Though I have been working with open education in various capacities since 2015, I am fairly early in my career as a scholar, publishing my first peer reviewed works only in the last year. Despite my lack of publications, I felt confident in accepting this opportunity that I was fully capable of editing this series (and incredibly excited to do so), and that my status as an early career scholar in the field would be an asset to this publication and to open education in general. As you’ll note in the papers we’ve collected in this first volume, it’s incredibly important and valuable to amplify the voices of diverse and early career scholars, if only to hear perspectives and focuses beyond those we see cited repeatedly.

The advisory board for this series started with personal outreach to scholars and practitioners within my professional network whom I knew had experience in open pedagogy and instructional design of open education. I was fortunate to connect with four amazing board members, each with their own strengths. Our first task as a board was to develop an equity statement that reflected the values we wanted in this series. In developing the early drafts of our equity statement, the board recommended seeking two additional board members who could help us shape this series to publish diverse work and reach a diverse audience. After holding an open call, two additional board members joined us, bringing their own perspectives and expertise to the project. With the help of our two new members, we finalized our equity statement and also created a set of guidelines for submission review that focused on an equity lens.

Following our request for papers, each submission went through a multi-leveled peer review process. As editor of the series, I started with a round of “gatekeeping” in which I reviewed each submission to ensure they fit the series on a basic level, that they were anonymized, and that they met basic requirements of the series before continuing on to peer review. Our peer review team consisted of five members of the open education community selected via application. Each submission was reviewed by three double-blind peer reviewers—authors did not know who their reviewers were, and reviewers did not know who the authors were. At the end of that process, each of the reviewers gave us permission to publish their names in the acknowledgements of this first volume so that we could recognize and thank them for their essential contribution. At the end of the peer reviews, submissions and their reviews were then shared with the advisory board; board members read each submission and considered peer reviews before leaving their own thoughtful feedback and recommendations. We completed our review process with a live meeting in which we spent about two hours discussing each submission, its peer reviews, and its board feedback before making a decision on acceptance. Of the nine submissions we received, one was accepted immediately, six were accepted with revisions, and two were not accepted. Ultimately, all seven accepted papers were revised according to the feedback left by peer reviewers and board members.

The advisory board and I established an overarching “definition” of open pedagogy, recognizing that defining most categories of open education is rather hard to do. For the purposes of this series, we view open pedagogy as teaching and learning practices and environments that promote equity, collaboration, and innovation and invite students to create and share knowledge with future publics, often in association with the use of open educational resources (OER). And open pedagogy does not stand on its own in higher education pedagogy: “constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy are all recognizable pedagogical strands that overlap with Open Pedagogy” (DeRosa & Jhangiani, n.d.). Furthermore, open pedagogy is only one branch of an overarching “ecosystem of Open Education, Pedagogy, and Access” that the authors of our first paper, Kaye and Wilson, term with a general “Open” (p. 21). They echo Chtena’s (2019) findings on the “social construction of openness” with their concluding question of “[h]ow might we change the ways we educate faculty about what it means to be Open that centers the common goals of Open initiatives rather than the discrete definitions that aren’t even affirmed fully by our fields (Hyde & Hey, 2021)?” (p. 22).

This web of interconnected considerations in defining open pedagogy in mind, I’m thrilled to present this first volume of Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice in which we hope to synthesize the many branches and applications of open pedagogy and spark conversations that both deepen our existing knowledge and challenge us to branch further. To that end, this first volume includes seven thought-provoking discussions of research, theory, and practice within and connected to open pedagogy, each contributing a different set of ideas to spark further conversations.

In “Creating Learning Spaces for Social Justice Projects: Applying the Values of Critical Digital Pedagogy and Open Pedagogy,” Elaine Kaye and Nicole Wilson start us off with a framework for social justice-centered open pedagogy that “can build community, require trust, and create spaces to share power in order to dismantle systems of oppression” (p. 21). Furthermore, their analysis of the common goals of open initiatives challenges faculty to engage in interdisciplinary work through open pedagogy, “reclaiming our praxis” from power differentials and disciplinary silos. Complimentary to this idea of “reclaiming our praxis,” Lisa Bernd, Shelley E. Rose, and Heather Caprette share a series of open pedagogy assignments implemented in theater and history courses in “Open Pedagogy Assignments in Theatre and History Courses to Promote Constructionist Learning and Digital Skills.” The results of those projects showed exciting opportunities to empower student voices and push back against government restrictions on curriculum because “[p]ublication of…students’ voices supersedes restrictions on expressing and sharing valuable information about our nation’s history…[and] provides a means of representation through participation for minority groups” (p. 53).

A few of our authors offer practical strategies for inclusive learning through open educational practices. In “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Open Educational Practices in K-8 Amidst High-Stakes Testing,” Daniela R. Amaya, Caroline E. Parker, and Krystal Thomas analyzed four K-8 OER programs dedicated to inclusivity to better understand how culturally sustaining pedagogy and open educational practices are being used in a K-8 context. They offer practical strategies for leveraging both for a more inclusive and equitable classroom that can be applied within and beyond K-8 education. Federica Goldoni and Kristina Watkins Mormino provide a captivating overview of gender and sexuality-inclusive language in modern language courses and the cultural issues that surround it in “Creating a Gender and Sexuality Inclusive OER World Language Course.” They offer practical strategies for making world language courses more inclusive through the use of OER, including considerations for controversies in some of the target language cultures.

Open pedagogy offers opportunities for impact in non-western contexts, as Michelle Barrett Ferrier and Geoffrey Graybeal indicate in “A Hybrid Model of Media Entrepreneurship Using Open Pedagogy Principles.” They developed an OER for media entrepreneurship via collaboration with a community of practice that led to programs for change in Ethiopia, supporting U.S. Embassy objectives through media innovation and digital literacy.

In “Free is Good: Designing and Implementing a Composition 1 Template Course with Help from an Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) Grant,” Jeanne Law and Tamara Powell shifted away from common focuses on student impact of OER use by creating a template Composition 1 course in response to ethical issues and institutional barriers for late-hires, part-timers, and limited-term faculty assigned to teach hybrid courses. Citing their department’s hesitancy to create the template course, they state that “in an ideal world there would be no template courses, as all faculty would have the time, resources, support, and motivation to build their own” (p. 157). They provide the template course openly for use beyond their department and institution, as well.

And finally, Daniel J. Bartholomay and Bailey Otter close us out with “Breaking the Textbook Barrier: Autoethnographic Reflections on Open Educational Resources and Equity in Higher Education.” They offer personal experiences with open education from the faculty perspective as well as the undergraduate student perspective. Unlike Goldoni and Mormino, who described concerns over fewer updates of OER materials in world language courses, Bartholomay and Otter found that OER are more up to date because they “are created by experts in the field who are passionate about sharing their knowledge with others” (p. 192). And echoing Bernd, Rose, and Caprette, they indicate that OER provide better representation for underserved communities and are “powerful tools for students with marginalized identities” (p. 196).

The advisory board and I are thrilled to finally present this first volume of Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice. Our hope is that this first volume will set the stage for a rich and diverse series of publications on open pedagogy and many other connected pedagogies and concepts.

References

Amaya, D. R., Parker, C. E., & Thomas, K. (2024). Culturally sustaining pedagogy and open educational practices in K-8 amidst high-stakes testing. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 79-96). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a3/.

Bartholomay, D. J., & Otter, B. (2024). Breaking the textbook barrier: Autoethnographic reflections on open educational resources and equity in higher education. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 184-205). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a7/.

Bernd, L., Rose, S. E., & Caprette, H. (2024). Open pedagogy assignments in theatre and history courses to promote constructionist learning and digital skills. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 49-78). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a2/.

Chtena, N. (2019). The social construction of openness: Open textbooks and their interpretations. The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.18848/1832-3669/CGP/v15i03/23-40.

DeRosa, R. & Jhangiani, R. (n.d.). Open pedagogy. Open Pedagogy Notebook. https://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/.

Ferrier, M. B., & Graybeal, G. (2024). A hybrid model of media entrepreneurship using open pedagogy principles. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 128-155). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a5/.

Goldoni, F. & Mormino K. W. (2024). Creating a gender and sexuality inclusive OER world language course. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 97-127). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a4/.

Kaye, E. & Wilson, N. (2024). Creating learning spaces for social justice projects: Applying the values of Critical Digital Pedagogy and Open Pedagogy. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 1-48). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a1/.

Law, J., & Powell, T. (2024). Free is good: Designing and implementing a Composition 1 template course with help from an Affordable Learning Georgia grant. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: innovative theory and practice (pp. 156-183). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a6/.

Editor Bio

Tiffani Tijerina, Texas Tech University and Kennesaw State University

Tiffani Tijerina is a PhD candidate in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric program at Texas Tech University (TTU), where she is studying OER with the support of an Open Education Research Fellowship from the Open Education Group. She has previously served as program manager for Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) and on the steering committee for the Open Education Conference, and she is currently an instructor at Kennesaw State University and TTU. Since 2015, she has worked on and led numerous Affordable Materials Grant projects through ALG’s offerings, including producing, adopting, and sustaining OER. She is the author of several publications, including Open Technical Communication (2020, 2016), “Perspectives from a Departmental Adoption of an Open Technical Communication Textbook” (2023), “Fostering Student Agency Through Ungrading: Project- and Portfolio-Based Methods and Case Studies” (2023), and “’But who really pays when it’s free?’: Debunking Publisher Claims About OER in Writing Courses” (2023). She is the editor for this edited collection, Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice.

Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.