This chapter operationalizes the values of Critical Digital Pedagogy (Morris & Stommel, 2018; Stommel, Friend, & Morris, 2020a) and Open Pedagogy by sharing the stories from two projects that center social justice: the Emotional Oral Histories and Teaching Hard Histories for Racial Healing projects. Through these reflections with collaborators, we share how a values-based framework was applied to various layers of open pedagogy work, such as creating space for interdisciplinary faculty, staff, and student teams; supporting faculty decisions for teaching and learning; and supporting student engagement in open pedagogy. By applying this values-based framework to Open Pedagogy projects, advocates for Open can widen the entrance to Open Education as another avenue for seeking social justice in learning spaces. One key lesson from our experiences and the narratives shared in this chapter is how a values-based framework can cut across the disciplinary silos that make up our current systems to support work that is interdisciplinary and directly addresses other types of power differentials. Our work is an invitation to faculty and students to think beyond OER and textbook adoption and see how their own pedagogical and educational goals—including creating more equitable learning spaces—can be realized through Open Pedagogy. In this co-created chapter, we are amplifying student and faculty voices in the evolving understanding of the role of Open Pedagogy in social justice work.
Key words: equitable learning spaces, open pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, values, social justice
Suggested citation: 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/.
The connection between Open Education and Open Pedagogical practices and social justice is a topic that’s continuing to evolve (Bali et al., 2020; Lambert, 2018; Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, 2018; Roberts-Crews, 2022). Open practices are often discussed as being “transformative, ameliorative, neutral or even negative” (Bali et al., 2020, p. 3) in combating injustice. Lambert (2018) developed a definition of social justice, as follows: “A process and also a goal to achieve a fairer society which involves actions guided by the principles of redistributive justice, recognitive justice or representational justice” (p. 227). As instructional designers in higher education, as well as scholars, practitioners, teachers, and activists, we must continue to critically analyze and apply social justice as a process and a goal (Lambert, 2018); creating spaces that can hold that tension while making design choices is one aim of our framework. Through our project design process, we strive to transform the oppressive and marginalized ways of being that currently exist in social and political institutions, specifically as they intersect with higher education. The movement toward critically analyzing Open Education and Open Pedagogy as an endeavor for social justice is in clear alignment with Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP), which inherently values social justice work. We have developed a framework that centers social justice while applying the values of Critical Digital Pedagogy and Open Pedagogy to decision-making throughout our experiences of the two projects presented in this chapter. Applying the framework (Figure 1) to the various layers of Open Pedagogy work includes creating space for interdisciplinary faculty, staff, and student teams; supporting faculty decisions for teaching and learning; and guiding student engagement in open pedagogy. The three overlapping circles in the framework are representative of the co-creators and their experiences that are necessary for designing and developing Open Pedagogy projects that center social justice. In order for these three experiences to function together requires a humanized pedagogy that critically acknowledges, honors, and deconstructs power which invites students to develop a committed involvement to re-create knowledge (Freire et al., 2018).
Figure 1: A values-based framework for Open Pedagogy
This narrative has been co-created with project collaborators, but the two primary authors are instructional designers at James Madison University. CDP has contributed to our development through necessary personal reflection and work, centering an ethic of care, and modeling our values in all we do so that we can focus on building authentic relationships with faculty and students (Kaye & Wilson, 2022). In these interdisciplinary projects, our roles include project coordination, design work, implementation, assessment, facilitation, and outreach efforts. The instructional designers had previously worked with the faculty from these projects, building trust and relationships over several semesters. Because of the ethos with which we approach our work, faculty trusted us to co-develop the projects with them where we could implement our values-based framework. Faculty and students could also take the next step of trusting the authors to be good stewards of their stories (Brown, 2021a), thus deepening the conversation around Open Pedagogy.
The stories and experiences from the following project teams (e.g., faculty and students) were selected to highlight how our values-based framework has been implemented, but specifically these projects are exemplars of how faculty and instructional designers can build trust.
The authors have supported Dr. Kristen McCleary in her pedagogical development and digital scholarship. The Emotional Oral Histories project is a class assignment for a General Education course. This course examines issues in recent history as a means to introduce, develop, and enhance critical thinking skills and to supplement writing, oral communication, library, and computing skills objectives for General Education. The project is a major component of the course. Students move through the process of preparing for, conducting, transcribing, and sharing publicly on a website (Social Change Interviews, 2023) the finalized oral histories. For more detail on the project see the Open Ed conference presentation, below (Kaye, Wilson, et al., 2021).
The authors are part of a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project team focusing on developing open-curricular and pedagogical materials for secondary education that use the research and scholarship on the history of lynchings in Virginia (JMU COE Curriculum Development Team, 2021). Our team includes College of Education and Justice Studies faculty, Libraries faculty and staff, and graduate students (De Fazio et al., 2021; Kaye, Cancienne, et al., 2021). The foundation for the lesson plans comes from the digital scholarship project, Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia, and work of Dr. Gianluca DeFazio and his students over the past few years.
As educators, activists, and learners, we must create and engage in communities of trust that are built on an ethic of care because at the heart of CDP is “a way we treat one another” (Stommel, Friend, & Morris, 2020b, p.2). Through our personal and professional growth, the authors have developed a community of trust. Charles Feltman defines trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions” (Brown, 2021b). Trust is strengthened through behaviors like reliable collaboration, extending generosity toward each other, making space for and engaging in difficult conversations, and a commitment to self-reflection and curiosity (Brown, 2023). Pearce et al. (2022) highlight the importance of bringing care into the classroom when doing the work of Open Pedagogy. We create spaces where care is modeled and experienced. The role of praxis as part of CDP is one of the most powerful spaces of activist teaching (hooks, 1994).
Stemming from Critical Pedagogy, specifically the work of Paulo Freire, CDP is a growing approach to education; it is a social justice movement and a “method of... humanization'' that's desperately needed in all levels of our education systems (Morris & Stommel, 2018, ch. 1). CDP leverages the questions and perspectives of critical theory to de-center the role of technology in teaching and learning, and re-center our humanity (Morris & Stommel, 2018; Stommel, Friend, & Morris, 2020a). Diverse voices build a shared understanding of CDP through the reflection and practice of its core tenets. One key distinction between CDP and other approaches to education is the insistence that teaching is political—we cannot separate education and politics. From its historical roots in Critical Pedagogy, CDP and those that ascribe to this work “hold values that are anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-fundamentalist” (Rorabaugh, 2020, p. 15). CDP upholds the following values: “centers its practice on community and collaboration; requires invention to reimagine the ways that communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries; […] cannot be defined by a single voice; […] have use and application outside traditional institutions of education; [...] open and networked educational environments […] must create dialogues in which both students and teachers participate as full agents'' (Morris & Stommel, 2018, ch. 1).
One key lesson from our experiences and the narratives shared in this chapter is how a values-based framework can cut across the disciplinary silos that make up our current systems to support work that is interdisciplinary and directly addresses other types of power differentials. When people (e.g., faculty, students, and community members) see themselves represented and have a shared goal of creating knowledge that’s more accessible and inclusive, we can move towards creating a more socially just world. Audrey Watters (2020) writes, “The web promised openness. Open access. Open knowledge. Collaboration. Distribution. Instead what we have today is a mass of information silos and content farms. What we have today, if we’re honest with ourselves, are old hierarchies hard coded into new ones” (p. 27). CDP provides a guide to question the technologies we use in the process of open pedagogy and to seek better ways of dismantling and re-imagining these old hierarchies, rather than centering digital tools as a savior for teaching and learning.
As our project teams learn, reflect, and refine our processes (Kaye & Wilson, 2022) and outcomes, all of our work is underpinned by the values stated in the 5 Rs for Open Pedagogy: respect, reciprocity, risk, reach, and resist. Jhangiani (2019) defines the 5 Rs and invites us to use, remix, and be in conversation about how these values can move our work forward. Below you will see a few examples of how the 5Rs show up in our spaces of praxis as well as the connections we make with the values of CDP and how we use the values to name our choices and behaviors.
We experience and center respect for all voices, which is required to uphold the value of CDP that states that it “...cannot be defined by a single voice” (Rorabaugh, 2020 p. 15) and take great care to focus on how the stories and experiences of interviewees and people of the past are honored. We analyze the role of respect in the classroom and what this means for labor-intensive processes. Finally, being intentional and leveraging the values of respect make space for authentic and valuable collaboration.
Reciprocity is only achieved through vulnerability from those involved (Brown, 2010). The Teaching Hard Histories for Racial Healing project is created upon the value of reciprocity. For example, scholarship and teaching practices directly inform each other when openly published lesson plans, which use primary sources and digital scholarship, engage current and future educators to rethink and redesign curriculum—which can then be shared back out. Creating teaching spaces that center reciprocity is deeply connected with the work of CDP which requires building spaces of praxis that question power structures and seek to dismantle oppressive systems, in and outside of the classroom. In our project teams, we intentionally and collaboratively articulate the narratives about each project while considering the needs of each team member in terms of promotion, tenure, and annual evaluation processes.
We consciously understand and grapple with the risks involved for all—the risk for students publishing openly, the risk for interviewees, and the risk of our teams engaging in social justice work—while also acknowledging the privileges and responsibilities we hold as a group. The value of risk is closely tied to the CDP tenant that teaching is inherently political—it is the politicized nature of education that makes this work “risky”. When the values of Open and CDP are used as a framework for social justice projects, we can also see when the decisions to create open materials or engage with open projects become political. We often discuss and assess the risk for faculty and teachers who implement these pedagogical practices—recognizing that some departments and systems don’t value digital projects or Open Pedagogy and instead prefer more traditional forms of teaching and scholarship. We also acknowledge the risk involved for the interviewees and emphasize their agency and choice in the process of determining what information is public and how it is presented.
When students are publishing openly, the work reaches beyond the semester and the classroom. Future student-scholars can use and add to this work, current teachers can implement and adapt lessons, and faculty can incorporate content into other courses, and these resources are open to all. Gathering and sharing stories openly that are not available via traditional informational materials is aligned with the CDP value of “having use and application outside of traditional institutions of education” and “re-imagining the ways in which communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries” (Morris & Stommel, 2018).
Inherent in our being and work is a focus on resisting the structures and tenets of white supremacy culture (Okun, 2022) and other systems of oppression. The value of resistance clearly overlaps with the values of CDP (Rorabaugh, 2020). Specifically, we approach our spaces with a “method of humanization” (Morris & Stommel, 2018). Also, as mentioned earlier, we are specifically focused on resisting the hierarchical structures inherent in higher education and empowering students.
The following image is a representation of the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy that guide the work of social justice projects, like the Emotional Oral Histories and Teaching Hard Histories for Racial Healing projects. By sharing these values and framework with faculty and students, we can design learning spaces, make project management decisions, choose curriculum, construct pedagogical practices, and formulate assessments that are grounded in liberatory practices (Freire et. al., 2018; hooks, 1994).
Figure 2: Applying the Values of CDP and Open as "The Praxis" for Social Justice Work
Above, we have described the values that influence our work—the approach to collecting, reflecting on, and sharing out the stories of our collaborators was based on the same values. For example, the designers selected possible publication venues that allow for the acknowledgement of contribution from faculty and students as authors to clearly elevate the voices of faculty and students. The purpose of gathering narratives from our collaborators is not to create an original research study but rather to tell the story of these projects in a way that is equitable, inclusive, and demonstrates “good story stewardship” (Brown, 2021a, p. 265). When reviewing the written responses, the authors went line-by-line and through a lens of respect to bring in as much of each narrative as possible to highlight how the values from our framework are experienced by both faculty and students in the implementation of an Open Pedagogy project. We have organized the shared experiences into themes to support readers as they engage with these reflections in order to engage in a more inclusive dialogue about Open Pedagogy. Our goal in doing this work is to amplify student and faculty voices. To gather our stories for the chapter, we created tailored and open-ended reflection questions (see Appendix) for all stakeholders to respond to in writing if they were interested in contributing. Finally, this process also included conversations about how the authors could use the reflections provided.
The co-constructed findings section is organized around the themes from the questions we asked. The authors have selected contributors’ quotes that highlight their experiences and support connections to the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy. Readers can engage with full responses, and we encourage you to do so. It’s important to note that not all collaborators chose to contribute a response.
As instructional designers, we have grappled with what Open means for our work. Being part of an academic library, we have observed and participated in the trends around the field of Open. The field of information sciences has made progress in labeling and defining the various aspects of Open: open access, open publishing, open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open educational practices (Lambert, 2018). While these definitions have provided a foundation and moved open efforts forward, at what point do the discrete distinctions become a barrier to making Open for everyone? In their responses, it’s clear that faculty and students view and label open as a more singular goal by often referring to this larger idea as “Open”. This indicates how they value access, publishing, and pedagogy as all work toward a common goal. Through the implementation of these projects, faculty indicate a clear and expansive growth in terms of how they understand—and label—Open. It’s important to acknowledge that the reflection and vulnerability needed to accomplish this growth doesn’t happen serendipitously. By grounding the projects in the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy, we can hold space for transformative experiences. These faculty reflections exemplify this:
Prior to engaging in this project, I had very little understanding of Open Educational Practices. My familiarity with Open was largely as a consumer. For example, I had accessed some resources on Open to support a book talk. My evolution of understanding regarding Open Educational Practices, therefore, was quite substantial during this project. I have learned why Open is important, discussed this importance with my students, learned about copyright, and engaged in the process of creating, editing, and uploading items to Open.
I had not heard of open educational practices. However, now that I have worked with this team Teaching Hard Histories for Racial Healing project I have an in-depth understanding of what it means for educational materials to be Open.
Students also indicated growth through their work on these projects noting confusion early in the process about what Open is. This confusion eventually evolved into valuing the creation and use of Open materials, which demonstrates the Open value of reciprocity, as seen in the following student responses:
Before this class, I understood Open Educational Practices as a flipped classroom structure where students do most of the instruction for themselves and their peers. Now, I see Open Ed as a way for a professor and students to each contribute work and ideas and for students to find inspiration from other students’ work. I consider a “world view of open” to be a way to understand and value others’ work, ideas and efforts.
The Open Educational Projects we completed were incredibly valuable to my overall learning experience. They provided academic benefits through an inherently collaborative and flexible structure while also fostering deeper communication and interactions with my peers and their ideas.
I did not know a lot about Open Educational Practices before this class. This is a topic that I otherwise would not have had any exposure to in other classes.
I had never heard of Open Educational Practices or Open Educational Resources before this project. This project has opened my eyes to a new way to accept, teach, and share resources and information.
Faculty broadly defined an Open worldview through their experiences. In the exploration of the Open worldview, they considered how Open practices, grounded in CDP’s value of open and networked environments, can disrupt current information systems.
It has been a long process for me to let go of the ‘banking system’ of education model. I have had to let go of the control that a textbook promises for shaping a class. I have found connections in unexpected places by looking at history from the margins.
These materials, now provided on Open, are no longer behind a paywall but are now accessible to all who search, engage, reflect, and use the materials. This idea of a “window” into various places and spaces that might not have been accessible without Open, is how I would define a “world view of open” - one that offers consumers a place to access educational resources and materials that may not have been previously accessible as well as a place where consumers are now able to view (as well as engage with) new ideas, texts, strategies, etc. Also, once your “world view” is opened, due to Open, then you become not only a consumer, but also a producer or creator of educational materials.
It’s clear that faculty and student experiences are transformative, and they recognize Open as a process and a goal.
One of the key characteristics identified as being incredibly valuable to faculty and students was the way in which Open makes space to hear from many voices and reach more people. Through the following reflections, we see those values of CDP and Open Pedagogy surface.
(student) I think that a “world view of open” means experiencing and learning from various types of sources that allow students to broaden their perspectives. This project allowed me to learn and hear from others’ perspectives about events that were occurring or had occurred, in the world. This allowed me to develop a better understanding of what was going on in the world and how it was impacting people.
(faculty) They are accessible in that they provide a space and place for educators to go to and engage with a community of Open authors, resources, materials, and institutions that may not have been easily available, if not due to Open.
Faculty and students both commented on the lack of diverse voices found in textbooks and the current curriculum. We see the role this work has in changing the curriculum to be more inclusive:
(faculty) By collecting the interviews on a public website, students create an alternative textbook to contemporary ‘history.’ This exercise helps them to deconstruct the textbooks of their past by seeing all of the small changes and events that were left out of their past history texts. It, thus, asks them to reimagine or re-envision the ways in which the educational system has prioritized the memorization of facts over other more nuanced historical analysis.
(student) By choosing to make my oral history project public for anyone to see, it gives people an opportunity to learn about eras of history or topics from different and more personal, emotional perspectives unlike what one might find in a textbook.
As we build these spaces of praxis grounded in values of CDP and Open, we must consider the risk and emotional labor needed to ensure that our materials and resources do not replicate and perpetuate harm (Bali et al., 2020; Pearce et al., 2022). In the reflections from faculty and students, the role of risk and the “weight” of social justice work is evident:
The Open process wasn’t easy or natural for me. Part of it is me constantly questioning, “is this ready to be shared with the world?” I worry. I worry it isn’t ready, for the precise reasons I mentioned above. I want to create curriculum that is centered on equity, social justice, and challenges the status quo. I want to center historically marginalized and oppressed voices and do so in humanizing and beautiful ways. Does our work do this? I don’t know. I think we are trying, and I think that is where we are headed, but we have to be okay with it being “open” while still involved in the process. It isn’t/won’t be perfect and perhaps that is the point. We are engaging in a community of consumers and producers in the Open space, and things will likely shift and change, that is the purpose of Open after all, right?
Faculty and students share the importance of learning from multiple voices and experiences, including how they have learned to value “reaching” back out and contributing:
(faculty) As an educator, “world view of open” means this grassroots endeavor gives students and the world writ large access to curriculum materials and resources without having to pay for them. As a result, all learners worldwide have access to educational curriculum and resources, which lessens the monetary value of receiving a high-quality education, and thus supports equality and educational opportunity globally.
(student) My lesson plan dealt with providing a voice to those that cannot tell their stories, and I think that if I left my name off, it would feel like I was deliberately choosing not to share my voice and ideas with others. This information isn’t something to hide from or run from. It’s something that we need to discuss and use to educate the masses.
(faculty) My English methods students are not just writing lesson plans for the instructor. They are writing lesson plans for teachers across America and around the world. As beginning teachers, they now have OER Commons that allows them to change, update, and add to their lessons as they decide what works best for their high school students. The open worldview that curriculum can be used, revised, and remixed may produce globally differentiated lessons, materials, and resources.
(student) These types of open sources have allowed me to hear from authors with different backgrounds, and I find their voices invaluable to my work regarding social justice.
Finally, faculty and students reflect on the incredible value of engaging in and doing research as well as using each other’s work as part of the learning process. Through these reflections, and in the literature (Pearce et al., 2022), it is clear that there are challenges in building spaces to co-create knowledge for faculty and students. One faculty member notes that
I also realize how embedded that ideology is in our students and part of the challenge of teaching in a collaborative way that contributes to Open Educational Practices is to convince the students that they can be co-creators in the classroom, that this is worthy of their time.
We see similar challenges show up for students through the following reflections:
I was definitely nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to produce anything worthwhile. Having my work published was a really strange feeling–I felt like it wasn’t detailed enough and that no one would understand what I was trying to say. I know that that isn’t the case, but it was still nerve racking.
I am not exactly comfortable saying that I am a “co-creator” because the resources I used for my projects already existed, and I gathered them to share with the world.
Even though I completed the oral history interview and the other requirements of the assignment, I wouldn’t consider myself a co-creator of knowledge for this Open Educational Project. I view my role as someone who elevated and shared my interviewee’s knowledge with others more than a contributor to their knowledge.
I would not necessarily use the word co-creator because the information I used in my projects was already available and had been compiled by other people. I worked more as an organizer and put the research together in my project.
I think I would consider myself a co-creator of knowledge. I didn’t create any information from either discipline that people couldn’t have already found on their own–I just put some of it together.
Simultaneously we see other students voicing their perspectives by affirming their role in co-creating knowledge.
For this assignment in particular, sharing content openly allowed for other students and myself to recognize insights that may not have been easily discoverable from other forms of research––much of the knowledge shared came from anecdotes and/or personal experience with a historical moment. In a sense, I would describe myself and my peers as co-creators of knowledge––by sharing our content with one another, we were able to draw conclusions and develop new insights based on how we each synthesized our previous contributions.
In this instance, I would describe myself as a co-creator of knowledge because I did the work to create a cohesive interview with supplemented secondary research and helped a story be shared.
Exploring how the values of CDP and Open can be applied to build spaces where multiple voices are included, listened to, and valued is a powerful tool for learning and dismantling oppressive systems. The more we talk with students and engage them in the process of creating knowledge, the more we are doing the work of “transformative justice” (Bali et al., 2020).
bell hooks (1994) claims that “Again and again Freire has had to remind readers that he never spoke of conscientization as an end itself, but always as it is joined by meaningful praxis” (p.47)—and praxis is “action and reflection upon the world in order to change it” (p. 14). Through reflection on their teaching and the implementation of our framework, faculty have the space and tools to reclaim their praxis. When prompted to explore their own praxis, we see how each discipline requires making different decisions, grappling with various theories and practices, and grounding work in theory while also focusing on application and reflection. One theme that arises is the need for support and encouragement for faculty to be transparent in their choices around Open while using language that is relevant and important in their own field. The following reflections provide a window into faculty experiences:
Praxis is the relationship between theory and practice. Freire (2018) defined praxis as the process of action and reflection to transform the curriculum. Like Freire, reconceptualist curriculum theorist, Pinar (2019), applied the notion of praxis to teachers by asking them to read theoretical curricular perspectives and then, based on the principles of the theory, asked teachers to construct curricular lesson plans, materials, and resources. This example is one way of engaging in praxis to reconceptualize and transform the curriculum for students.
The idea that curriculum must be reconceptualized for schools to succeed and for students to learn is not a new concept for me (Pinar, 2019). The learning process is inductive, that learning happens in a collaborative setting and that the teacher must learn with the students is not new. I have always worked this way in creating assignments with students (Cancienne, 2013), conducting educational arts-based research (Bagley & Cancienne, 2001; Bagley & Cancienne, 2002), and in my approach to choreography (Cancienne & Snowber, 2003; Cancienne et al., 2008).
What changed for me was the power of the assignment in two ways: First, the purpose of the assignment was to uncover the excluded or null curriculum (Eisner, 1994) and that the audience was going to be global. Taken together, these two aspects of digital critical pedagogy and open transformed my perspective of the potential of teaching in learning for 21 century critical digital pedagogical literacies. In this format, the work became more meaningful; students worked longer hours, had more conversations, and asked for more feedback from their peers than before.
My theoretical lens is grounded in educational curriculum theory and specifically, the reconceptualist movement led by Freire (2018), Pinar (2019), Greene (1995), and hooks (1994). A re-conceptualist cares deeply about social justice and the inequities in society. Reconceptualist educators want to educate students on the systems of power and, in turn, empower students to name and understand their experience, develop their voice, and take ownership for their learning. To foster agency to those without a voice, the teacher must uncover the excluded curriculum with their students. In this process of unlearning and relearning, curriculum becomes a complicated conversation (Pinar, 2019).
The responses from our faculty colleagues also confirm Lambert’s (2018) assertion that over time open educational research has fallen short in situating itself within or alongside established theoretical foundations within multiple fields. In the faculty responses, we can find insight into how to connect with theories from other disciplines. Using our framework, which values interdisciplinary knowledge-making, faculty have space to connect their theoretical background as they adopt and adapt the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy. We gain insight into the possible theoretical and methodological connections made as faculty engage in Open:
For me, praxis = teaching through the articulation of a concept that creates collaborative opportunities between student and professor. We workshop a concept through trial, revision, reflection, and action. Praxis is creation, collaboration, process, outcome, reflection, and ideally, action.
As an historian, there are a variety of ways in which we seek to understand the past. Due to the standardization of education, the ways in which public education has ‘sold out’ to a system that wants to measure learning as if it were a baking recipe, is highly problematic. It tells students that they and their communities are valid creators and makers of history.
I tell my students that we are embracing the emotions of lived experience in this class. We are deliberately textbook free. All of the readings for this class are available to my students on pdf so that it is economically accessible to everyone. I tell students that by collecting interviews of people we know, we are going to reshape what we know about history. Students not only collect interviews but they have to also ask an interesting question about at least three of the interviews and then try to answer it by bringing in valid outside materials that help them to do so.
It’s important to note that faculty within the same broad discipline of Education have incredible nuance in the theories and frameworks they are grounding their work in. In a space of praxis that leverages the values of CDP and Open, we make room for interdisciplinary conversations, questions, and understanding of how these can support each other and develop shared understanding, which is invaluable as faculty evolve their teaching practices (Cronin, 2017).
For me, praxis = the intersection of theory and practice.
My experience guiding students to develop open educational materials was a slow, deliberate process. I entered the project quietly and as a listener. I wanted to know the “why” behind the project before I fully committed to it and more importantly, engaged my students in this process. After many months of listening and learning with the project team, I began to see not only the purpose and reasons behind the project, but also where I fit and where my students could fit.
It was really important that I set the context for the work through theories and curriculum design frameworks centered on equity and social justice in social studies education. We read and engaged with authors who write about equity and social justice. For example, we read Gloria Ladson-Billings on culturally relevant pedagogy, Bettina Love on abolitionist teaching, and Hasan Kwame Jeffries on teaching hard histories. Considering these theories and frameworks, we entered into the curriculum design process using the College, Career, & Civic Life (C3) framework and Inquiry Design Model (IDM) to construct social studies curriculum. These theories, pedagogies, and practices framed the development of the student’s IDMs for the project. They developed an orientation toward critical pedagogy, which we then moved to considering this framing as it relates to Open and the digital world. I shared with my whole class that they had a chance to contribute to changing the narrative in social studies education in (state) by developing curricula that largely does not exist and is in support of the new 2022 history and social science standards in (state), which works to include African American histories, experiences, and voices in the curriculum. Students seemed motivated to transform social studies curricula and Open facilitated this process for us.
In his book Radical Hope, Kevin Gannon explores how teachers and scholars in higher education must better understand and operationalize praxis as posed by bell hooks and Paulo Freire. He states, “Too many times, pedagogical theory seems to focus on philosophical and attitudinal shifts while leaving the application portion unsaid” (2020, p. 49). Applying the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy guides us in making practical decisions that are “...courageous and flexible, as they scaffold the learning experience with the students...” (Pearce et al., 2022). This can address the challenges or questions students face when publishing openly:
I enjoyed the process of sharing responsibility to develop materials. To know that my work could be used to assist another student in their research was a very unique feeling and an opportunity I did not expect to have in a GenEd class. I understand this discipline to be about contributing your own story to a body of research and enabling your work to be seen.
I also felt a sense of personal responsibility for the quality of my research when I realized that other students would potentially be using my work to discover new insights as they developed their own projects.
However, it was very rewarding and humbling to be able to share someone else’s story and perspective on history with my classmates, professor and anyone else who might visit the website. I felt responsible for telling and sharing my interviewee’s story appropriately, accurately and with integrity.
Through this work, faculty (re)claim their spaces of praxis as they explore sharing power in their classrooms. They are connecting how the values of CDP and Open provide clear guidance on the decisions needed to develop a project that empowers students and themselves as indicated in these responses:
They and I took risks and created our best work. We were all changed by the process, the students, and the teacher. This project supports my teaching and learning perspective because I believe that the curriculum should be reconstructed. It is not a noun. It is a verb (Pinar, 2019), and curriculum and instruction must empower students (hooks, 1994).
I think the biggest take-away from Open Educational Practices has been how much is to be gained by breaking away from hierarchies of power, such as the “sage on the stage,” approach to college-level education.
When we build spaces of praxis through the implementation and design of social justice projects that incorporate the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy, we are bridging theory and practice in a way that can be replicated and used as a model for future projects. It’s also critical to honor the ways in which faculty name the entire ecosystem of Open Education, Pedagogy, and Access as a broad term “Open” rather than referring to its discrete parts. Adopting the practice of using the big “Open” to talk about this work allows faculty and others to center the values and world view of open rather than create a barrier of technical definitions (Werth & Williams, 2022). The more ways in which barriers can be removed, the more ways the work of creating new knowledge also becomes a space of belonging for everyone in our communities. It’s clear from faculty and student experiences that the values of CDP and Open resonate in their own contexts as learners, teachers, and knowledge producers. These values also support our understanding of how Open Pedagogy projects can build community, require trust, and create spaces to share power in order to dismantle systems of oppression.
As we consider the next steps for our work and the actions needed to push Open forward as a social justice movement, we can look to the values of CDP to develop our critical questions; CDP asks more questions than it answers, and “Without a doubt, Critical Digital Pedagogy energizes all of us to be an answer, if we choose to be” (Benjamin, 2020 p.xi). One next step is to continue to refine, research, and implement our framework in various contexts. Werth & Williams’s (2022) work indicates the positive impacts of value-first frameworks for bringing faculty into the world of Open Education. Could the values of CDP and Open be leveraged to create spaces of praxis for teachers and students to garner and act on a collective sense of power? The framework we’ve created is a guide to doing so. We must also consider how institutions of higher education, which often state their purpose as contributing to the public good (Mushtare & Kane, 2021), can leverage their power and resources to build connections across the silos of the educational landscape. While there’s risk in this work, having a collective and connected response is the only way forward. The next steps for the authors include gathering and sharing the stories of other cross-disciplinary projects in which we use this framework.
As research focuses on student experiences of renewable assignments and open pedagogy evolves (Clinton-Lisell & Gwozdz, 2023), we can explore other ways of assessing student feedback through formative assessment practices. By involving students in the process of sharing their experiences and amplifying their voices, there is space for future research and reflection in how we implement Open pedagogy. After gathering and sharing the experiences of faculty and students using our values-based framework, the authors propose exploring this further as a qualitative methodology in alignment with the critical research known as “bricolage” that focuses on empowerment and advancing social justice through qualitative research (Kincheloe et al., 2017).
We suggest critical conversations and reflection on the following questions to advance the open movement:
We have already begun to use the lessons learned through faculty and student reflections from this chapter in multiple spaces, including an Open Pedagogy Fellowship, course design consultations, and broader conversations. Being an advocate for faculty and student perspectives creates an opportunity to break down barriers and foster equitable and inclusive learning environments. As we continue pushing forward the important work of Open, we ask you to deeply reflect on your own practices, projects, and spaces while considering how the values of CDP and Open Pedagogy might transform your praxis.
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As an instructional designer, I’m strongly influenced by critical instructional design, critical digital pedagogy, open pedagogy, equity-based teaching, and social justice pedagogy. I have experience teaching undergraduate and continuing education courses. I’m interested, open, and committed to valuing experiences and understanding other ways of knowing.
As an instructional designer, I am passionate about centering social justice in all projects that I work on. I approach my work from a critical instructional design perspective incorporating learning science, critical digital pedagogy, open pedagogy, and care. I have experience teaching multiple undergraduate courses.
Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.