2nd call: Open Education and the Commons

2nd call: Open Education and the Commons (updated January 2025)

Within the second volume of Education Ouverte et Libre – Open Education, scholars are invited to reflect on Open Education from the commons’ perspective. You can revisit discussions that happened in the past, actualising them for the XXIst century context, explore new avenues, reach out to liquid and postdigital perspectives (Tesar et al., 2022), etc.

Commons are being studied in different philosophical approaches, including from the perspective of critical (Quintana & Campbell, 2019) or postdigital scholarship (Escaño & Mañero, 2022). Recent key themes cover resources, property rights and local management, no matter whether the commons are forests, urban areas or software (Lambert et al., 2021). Neary and Winn (2012) discuss the opening of intellectual property through Open Educational Resources (OER) and advocate for producing a new common sense. They suggest to open up to alternative forms of property and explore commons to focus on the social processes of production and labour, i.e. power and value, to create a sustainable and resilient form of commoning in society. Also inviting to think differently, and along with Weller (2011), Madison et al. (2022) suggest to position knowledge commons in a framework of abundance – versus scarcity. Dardot & Laval (2015) explain that commons should foremost be thought of and instituated as co-activity by a collective of humans (rather than in terms of co-property, co-membership or co-ownership).

Knowledge commons or commons in general: where to stand with Education?

Education, in a modern conception, may be considered an overall intellectual endeavour and one might be tempted to limit the scope of the study of commons and Open Education to knowledge commons (e.g. Hess, 2012; Hess & Ostrom, 2007), intellectual commons (e.g. Deimann & Peters, 2016) and/or digital commons (e.g. Dulong de Rosnay & Stalder, 2020). Yet, recent texts like the one on indigenous and local knowledge (Benyei et al., 2022) or Latour’s claim for a nature-culture continuum (Latour, 2006) show that, in the domain of education, considering commons holistically can make sense. All the more so in Sterling's (2021; 2024) conception of sustainability, which addresses the 4Ps (practice, policy, purpose, paradigm) and explores the systemic (as opposed to mechanistic) paradigm.

Furthermore, exploring education as a commons, rather than as a common good or as a global public good might be worth to shed light on the subtle differences that exist between commons, common good and global public good. For instance, to what extent should the following finding with regard to normative implications be explored for Open Education, i.e. commons are said to consider "power with" and "power as cooperation" while global public goods are said to take the position of "power over" and "power as the ability to steer the conduct of others" (Brando et al., 2019, p. 570)? With regard to education, how can commons and public goods be understood in different ontologies and epistemologies?

Many other topics addressed in the literature on commons can be of interest for Open Education. For example: conceptualise value as a commons, placing value itself in the commons, as a collective agreement and being part of the shared rules that guide the collective action (Pazaitis et al., 2022, p. 255); explore Internet and Internet goods beyond their technological characteristics (Hofmokl, 2009); explore creative strategies to govern knowledge commons (Carpentier, 2021); explore the different conceptions of commons as shared by Bollier (2024).  

If you are interested to advance knowledge in the field of Commons and Open Education, you are cordially invited to contribute with different types of articles ranging from empirical research to reflective contributions. Articles can be pitched at a diversity of levels, e.g. epistemic, strategic, policy, economy, and adopt different disciplinary perspectives, e.g. education, anthropology, sociology, artificial intelligence, physics, etc.  

Practical information for the 2 step process

Call for papers: 15.11.2023 (and 15.01.2025)

Intent to submit and abstract submission (Step 1): 15.01.2024 and 15.03.2025

Notification of acceptance: 15.02.2024 and 30.03.2025

Submission deadline full article (Step 2): 15.06.2024 and 30.06.2025

Final submission after review: 15.10.2024 and 15.10.2025

Submission guidelines for Step 1: https://oap.unige.ch/journals/eol-oe/TwoStepsCallProcess

Submission guidelines for Step 2: https://oap.unige.ch/journals/eol-oe/information/authors

References

Benyei, P., Calvet-Mir, L., Reyes-García, V., & Villamayor-Tomas, S. (2022). Indigenous and Local Knowledge’s Role in Social Movement’s Struggles Against Threats to Community-Based Natural Resource Management Systems: Insights from a Qualitative Meta-analysis. International Journal of the Commons, 16(1), 263–277. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1154

Bollier, D. (2024). Challenges in Expanding the Commonsverse. International Journal of the Commons. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1389 

Brando, N., Boonen, C., Cogolati, S., Hagen, R., Vanstappen, N., & Wouters, J. (2019). Governing as commons or as global public goods: Two tales of power. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1), 553–577. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.907

Carpentier, P. (2021). Open Source Hardware, Exploring how Industry Regulation Affects Knowledge Commons Governance: An Exploratory Case Study. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1), 154–169. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1081

Dardot, P., & Laval, C. (2015). Commun. Essai sur la révolution au XXIe siècle. La Découverte.

Deimann, M., & Peters, M. A. (2016). The philosophy of open learning: Peer learning and the intellectual commons. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1821-0

Dulong de Rosnay, M., & Stalder, F. (2020). Digital commons. Internet Policy Review, 9(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1530

Escaño, C., & Mañero, J. (2022). Postdigital Intercreative Pedagogies: Ecopedagogical Practices for the Commons. In P. Jandrić & D. R. Ford (Eds.), Postdigital Ecopedagogies : Genealogies, Contradictions, and Possible Futures (pp. 231-246). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97262-2_12

Hess, C. (2012). The Unfolding of the Knowledge Commons. St. Anthony’s International Review, 8(1), 13-24. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/stair/stair/2012/00000008/00000001

Hess, C., & Ostrom, E. (Eds.). (2007). Understanding Knowledge as a Commons - From Theory to Practice. Cambridge https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6980.001.0001.

Hofmokl, J. (2009). Towards an eclectic theory of the internet commons. International Journal of the Commons, 4(1), 226–250. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.111

Lambert, J., Epstein, G., Joel, J., & Baggio, J. (2021). Identifying Topics and Trends in the Study of Common-Pool Resources Using Natural Language Processing. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1), 206–217. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1078

Latour, B. (2006). Nous n'avons jamais été modernes: Essai d'anthropologie symétrique. La Découverte.

Madison, M. J., Frischmann, B. M., Sanfilippo, M. R., & Strandburg, K. J. (2022). Too Much of a Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review of Abundance in Context [Original Research]. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.959505

Neary, M., & Winn, J. (2012). Open education: common(s), commonism and the new common wealth. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 12(4), 406-422. http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/4059/

Pazaitis, A., Kostakis, V., & Drechsler, W. (2022). Towards a Theory of Value as a Commons. International Journal of the Commons, 16(1), 248–262. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1153

Quintana, A., & Campbell, L. M. (2019). Critical Commons Scholarship: A Typology. International Journal of the Commons, 13(2), 1112–1127. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.925

Sterling, S. (2021). Concern, Conception, and Consequence: Re-thinking the Paradigm of Higher Education in Dangerous Times [Original Research]. Frontiers in Sustainability, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2021.743806

Sterling, S. (2024). Learning and Sustainability in Dangerous Times: The Stephen Sterling Reader. Agenda Publishing. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13473649

Tesar, M., Hytten, K., Hoskins, T. K., Rosiek, J., Jackson, A. Y., Hand, M., Roberts, P., Opiniano, G. A., Matapo, J., St. Pierre, E. A., Azada-Palacios, R., Kuby, C. R., Jones, A., Mazzei, L. A., Maruyama, Y., O'Donnell, A., Dixon-Román, E., Chengbing, W., Huang, Z., . . . Jackson, L. (2022). Philosophy of education in a new key: Future of philosophy of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(8), 1234-1255. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1946792

Weller, M. (2011). The digital scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury Academic. http://oro.open.ac.uk/29664/