OEP: Open Pedagogy
Open educational pedagogies, sometimes referred to as open teaching (Couros, 2010; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2016), are defined as teaching and learning habits, facilitated and supported by open educators, involve making or using OER, engage students in creating OER, and the sharing of accessible professional materials (Cronin, 2017; Farrow, 2015). The Cape Town Open Education Declaration suggests that, beyond using OER, open education includes “collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues … to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning” (The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, 2007, para. 4). As shared by McAndrew and Farrow (2013), the International Council for Open and Distance Education declares OEP to include the creation, use and repurposing of quality OER that is supported by institutional policies. Veletsianos (2015) suggests a distinction between OEP licensing and OEP sharing cultures, relating to making artifacts or activities to engage with others.
Hegarty (2015) explored open pedagogies by applying eight attributes - learner generated, connected community, peer review, participatory technology, innovation and creativity, sharing ideas and resources, people openness and trust, and reflective practice. These attributes rely on digital tools and resources but also envelop the skills and attitudes of educators and learners (Hegarty, 2015). Open pedagogies bring a high degree of sharing and authentic, agentic action into learning spaces but relies on learner self-regulation and learning needs (Hegarty, 2015). Educators who enact open pedagogies provide openly accessible, openly managed, socially engaging, experiential, and scaffolded learning events and assets as co-facilitators and catalysts for learning (Ehlers, 2011; Hegarty, 2015).
Open pedagogy is best defined as a:
This definition suggests an evolving understanding of what open pedagogy means and points toward the praxis/practices in education that enable openness. In this way, pedagogy moves beyond the collection of educational 'stuff' and shifts toward an orientation, a "quality held by educators themselves", and a description of an educational identity (Tur et. al., 2020, p. 4). For this research, I consider open pedagogies (OEP) as a subset encompassed within the broader term of OEPr."site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures. This site is dynamic, contested, constantly under revision, and resists static definitional claims. But it is not a site vacant of meaning or political conviction" (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2018).