An Uneasy Relationship: Open Educational Practice and Neoliberalism

Macintyre, Ronald (2015). An Uneasy Relationship: Open Educational Practice and Neoliberalism. In: The 5th ICTs and Society-Conference: The Internet and Social Media at a Crossroads: Capitalism or Commonism? Perspectives for Critical Political Economy and Critical Theory, 3-7 Jun 2015, Vienna.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/isis-summit-vienna-2015-s3012

Abstract

This paper is based on very practical concerns and observations about the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement. While it concerns educational practice, the paper starts with a focus on the rhetoric and stated ideals of the OER movement, exploring the relationship between open education and neoliberalism as an attempt to understand the apparent contradictions within the movement. The paper then looks at OER in distance education as an attempt to understand our own approach to Open Educational Practice (OEP). Drawing on older open education narratives it explores the role of openness in bringing new voices into education through partnerships, and how OEP foster opportunities for groups of learners distanced from education. The paper concludes by acknowledging the deliberate partiality of this reading, and with some questions we are starting to explore.