Towards Openness that Promotes Social Justice
Maha Bali, PhD @bali_maha
Center for Learning & Teaching, American University in Cairo,
Virtually Connecting & Equity Unbound
ONL March 30 & October 19 2022
السلام عليكم.
How are you feeling today? [type in chat]
Image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/kitten-with-mom-pussy-cat-2633283/
Where in the world do you belong? Use “star” to indicate where you are now, and “heart” to indicate places you love
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What’s happening today?
What nourishes you lately?
“Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual” - adrienne marie brown, Emergent Strategy
Why is openness important for you?
“Are you actively practicing generosity and vulnerability in order to make the connections between you and others clear, open, available, durable? Generosity here means giving of what you have without strings or expectations attached. Vulnerability means showing your needs”.
I think open education is about a lot of this – and also
“interdependence is not about the equality of offers in real time” (adrienne maree brown)
What is a recent “open” project you were recently involved in?
Cupcake story
Image from https://pixabay.com/images/id-3723832/
Even though openness is about more than “permissions”, it is important for us to know how creators intend for their work to be (re)used
Catherine Cronin (2017) says that openness is
Egyptian educator & author Taha Hussein: “Knowledge is like water & air”
“العلم كالماء و الهواء”
GIF from Giphy: https://giphy.com/gifs/water-stream-flowing-wyUehgweohXIQ
In what ways is “open education” like water (or should be)?
How do you understand OEP? Examples?
(another slightly less encompassing term is
Open Pedagogy)
Image from pasja1000 on Pixabay (Pixabay license) https://pixabay.com/photos/bottle-opener-metal-for-beer-4055405/
#SelfOER - Suzan Koseoglu & me (2016)
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/self-as-oer-selfoer/62679
Reflections & Re-thinking....
“Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices.”
“[O]pen educational practices (OEP) that undergird… OER… are: individual or collaborative conceptualisation; creation, curation (retention), circulation (distribution) of OER through practices such as open pedagogies; crowdsourcing; and open peer review using open technologies so that they can be easily located to encourage copying (re-use “as-is”), adaptation, re-curation and re-circulation.”
Open Pedagogy
“...an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education and a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part.”
“Open Education is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non-privileged learners who may be under- represented in education systems or marginalised in their global context.”
OneHE/Equity Unbound
Community-
building Resources
Scenarios - how can we move towards MORE social justice in this context?
Modified TRIZ (a liberating structure - working backwards to solve complex problems)
If our goal is to create open education projects that challenge, resist or redress social injustice… convert to an anti-goal
Modified TRIZ (a liberating structure - working backwards to solve complex problems)
Challenge the inherent “goodness” of open:
Image from Tweet. First seen in AMICAL keynote by Regina Gong
Previous model…
Content centric ─ Process centric
Teacher centric ─ Learner centric
Pedagogical ─ Social justice
Icons by Freepik with Flaticon Basic license
(Not in our paper: Cognitive, Behavioral, Affective)
(Economic, Cultural, Political;
Transformative, Ameliorative, Neutral, Negative)
Nancy Fraser’s framework (2005)
My thinking today:
We need to ask ourselves if we are infusing social justice throughout our purpose, process, people, product
Infusing
social justice
Purpose
Product
Process
People
Wikipedia - in what ways does it succeed/fail
at social justice?
Purpose
Product
Process
People
(open book)
Purpose
Product
Process
People
Focus on marginal voices, critical
perspectives on open
Challenge academic gatekeeping
With non-peer-
reviewed
pieces
Transparent,
centering
marginal
voices,
agency,
recognizing
partiality
From Open at the Margins intro
“When we think this question “who appears?” we are asked a question about how spaces are occupied by certain bodies who get so used to their occupation that they don’t even notice it… To question who appears is to become the cause of discomfort. It is almost as if we have a duty not to notice who turns up and who doesn’t” – Sara Ahmed
People
Infusing
social justice
Purpose
Infusing
social justice
Purpose
Process
“Intentional adaptation” in process
“Less prep, more presence”
(adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy)
39
Inequity
No Care
Care
Equity
SOCIALLY JUST
CARE
CONTRACTUAL
EQUITY
SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE
PARTIAL
CARE
Bali & Zamora (in press). Equity/Care Matrix: Theory & Practice. Italian Journal of Educational Technology
Infusing
social justice
Purpose
Process
People
Epistemic listening is key
We [the minorities] and you [the dominant] do not talk the same language. When we talk to you we use your language: the language of your experience and of your theories. We try to use it to communicate our world of experience. But since your language and your theories are inadequate in expressing our experiences, we only succeed in communicating our experience of exclusion. We cannot talk to you in our language because you do not understand it. (p. 575 in Lugones & Spelman, 1983)
Infusing
social justice
Purpose
Product
Process
People
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality
Bali, Caines, DeWaard, Hogue & Friedrich, 2019
Bali & Zamora, forthcoming
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality to redress injustice
Phase | Examples |
Pre-Design | Who is involved in the design? Who is the funder and what are their impositions? How might they privilege certain groups over others? |
Design | Does the design anticipate or respond to inequalities? Which oppressions does it redress? Which might it reproduce? |
Facilitation | “Intentional adaptation” (brown) to new inequalities that arise in the moment, is “generous authority” used? (Priyar Parker) |
Beyond the moment | How do you build inclusive/equitable community sustainably? |
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality: Vconnecting
Phase | Example |
Pre-Design | Most people involved in the design are of a marginalized group and empowered to make choices over which events, which speakers, etc. BUT English |
Design | Lowest-bandwidth possible tech within our ability; free to join; choosing diverse speakers, welcoming anyone in audience BUT some countries don’t have YouTube |
Facilitation | IEH - prioritize voices of those farthest from justice; “Intentional adaptation” to interpersonal oppression in the moment BUT invisible marginalities |
Beyond the moment | Building inclusive/equitable community - BUT Twitter not enough |
Spiral Journal (LS in development)�Calmly prepare for the work ahead while sharpening observational precision. �Inspired by Lynda Barry
Slide theme co-developed with my daughter, H. Fouad
Draw a continuous spiral as slowly & tightly as possible
Right now, I feel…
I joined this session in order to...
One thing I will do differently after this is...
I still need help with…
Review your journal [1m]
Underline or circle anything that stands out in your journal
Thank You!
Slides: https://bit.ly/ONL22bali
Email: bali@aucegypt.edu
Twitter: @bali_maha
Feedback: http://bit.ly/balikeynotes
(Some graphics by my daughter, H. Fouad)
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