Open Education and epistemic reflexion

The EOL-OE journal is happy to announce two new articles: The meaning of sharing under marketised education: an Ubu-ntu perspective by Mogobe Ramose; and Epistemology as a compass by Maryvonne Charmillot.

Open Education is known to be an umbrella term to define a complex compound entangling practices, concepts, scholarships, disciplines, etc., all driven by Openness (e.g. Weller, 2011). Digging deeper into the concept of Openness, it appears to be rooted in two main approaches. The first one going back to the Middle Ages and referring to shared, non-enclosed and the second going back to the 20^th and 21^st centuries and referring to legal rights (Pomerantz & Peek, 2016).

Open Education to promote epistemic justice is gaining more and more interest (e.g. Bali et al., 2020) and there is a pressing need for philosophical reflexions in education (e.g. Class, 2023) for which Openness might represent a lever.

Scholars engaging into Open Education come from all over the world, but it remains basically a concept conceived and used in the Global North. For this reason, it was deemed important to make a voice from the epistemic South visible: the voice of Mogobe Ramose. The result is somehow a shock with the use of very powerful concepts like epistemicide, religicide or economicide to describe experience with regard to own culture. On the other hand, the description of a holistic local African culture, Ubu-ntu, a lesson of humanness.

The article by Maryvonne Charmillot, who addresses epistemic violence at the level of scientific research comes as a resonance. The way to counterbalance this she suggests is about taking audacity and authorisation to construct "a space for ethical reflection", i.e. a "space for reflection on how to 'direct one's conduct' as a researcher" (Matthey, 2005)".

References:

Bali, M., Cronin, C., & Jhangiani, R. S. (2020). Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1. https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.565

Class, B. (2023). Epistemic Considerations of Open Education to Re-Source Educators’ Praxis Sustainably. Open Praxis, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.3.560

Matthey, L. (2005). Éthique, politique et esthétique du terrain : cinq figures de l'entretien compréhensif, Cybergeo. European Journal of Geography. http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/3426

Pomerantz, J., & Peek, R. (2016). Fifty shades of open. First Monday, 21(5). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i5.6360

Tesar, M., . . . 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/