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Abstract

Inclusion in the past has been a term associated predominantly with the lives of disabled people however it is now more broadly being used to encompass and capture a range of other social factors, and for the purpose of this investigation inclusion will be looked at through the lens of diversity with a particular focus on culturally appropriate material in regards to open educational resources (OERs). If openness allows for a global audience then culturally appropriate material is key to this process. Inclusion is a term that implies that you have to be granted access to a seat at the table therefore power relations and power differentials are key to how we understand the inclusion process. So the broad scope of inclusion has been narrowed down to consider whether they need decolonising, i.e. moving away from colonial perspectives and Westerncentric perspectives to decolonial thinking. One of the biggest issues facing OERs is that the majority of them are created in the global North, similarly this means that many of these resources are created at universities which are not in the global South. However it should be noted that OERs are not limited to university outputs even though these will be the focus of my project. My project aim is to critically analyse OERs which have been produced by the Open University through OpenLearn sites based on the area of childhood and youth. This paper format project utilises discourse analysis in order to ascertain how culturally appropriate these selection of resources are. However the process of analysing and making decisions on this is complex. As Bali (2016) rightly says ‘diversity is hard work’. It requires engage reflection by the educator on their own sets of values biases assumptions which may impact on the outcomes. I’m taking a two-pronged strategy influenced by the SOAS (2018) decolonising toolkit. Firstly will look all of the authors and contributors who are cited in these open educational resources, I will attempt to ascertain whether they come from the global north or the global south and attempt to capture as many social characteristics as I can in order to see the range of backgrounds. Secondly, I will assess the resources in terms of whether they have a Western centric approach to the subject matter, so have issues been addressed in terms of varying global perspectives? Who is positioned as ‘other’? What is the historical context? Do we get a sense that knowledge creation is a global phenomenon and not something which is predominantly linked to Western ideals? For the purpose of the conference I will critically analyse one of the chosen OERs using this framework based on children and digital technology. It is our duty as educators to enlighten students about ideas, perspectives, and frameworks which deviate from what they may have been taught in the past. The need to pay attention to cultural appropriate material has been clearly acknowledged recently within education given the movement to decolonise the curriculum, and more importantly decolonise the universities themselves. Therefore this project seems a timely addition to add weight to this movement in regards to inclusion and diversity.

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OU-H818/