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The adoption and impact of OEP and OER in the Global South: Theoretical, conceptual & methodological framework for the ROER4D project meta-synthesis
The document outlines the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological framework for a meta-synthesis of 18 studies on the adoption and impact of open educational practices and resources in the Global South conducted as part of the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development project. The framework analyzes educational challenges, contextual factors, agents, open educational practices and resources used, the impact of adoption, and the degree of social transformation across studies in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. The goal is to integrate insights from the individual studies into a higher-order synthesis.
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The adoption and impact of OEP and OER in the Global South: Theoretical, conceptual & methodological framework for the ROER4D project meta-synthesis
- 1. Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams OE Global2017, Cape Town, 8-10 Mar 2017 http://www.slideshare.net/ROER4D/ The adoption and impact of OEP and OER in the Global South: Theoretical, conceptual & methodological framework for the ROER4D project meta-synthesis
- 2. Research on OERfor Development (ROER4D) Phases 1 & 2 2 ROER4D Phase 1: Adoption Studies ROER4D Phase 2: Adoption & Impact Studies 18 independent sub-projects - 100 researchers & research assistants - 16 time zones - Aug 2013- Dec 2017 Hosted by the University of Cape Town, South Africa and Wawasan Open University, Malaysia Funded by the IDRC & DFID
- 3. 3 ROER4D - Clustersof empirical studies South America Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) South & Southeast Asia Survey of students & lecturers adoption of OER Brazil, Chile & Colombia Ghana, Kenya & South Africa India, Indonesia & Malaysia; Pakistan Lecturers’ adoption of OER (including MOOCs) & impact on pedagogical practices South Africa (2 studies) India; Mongolia Teacher educators’ adoption of OER & impact on pedagogical practices Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius (Wolfenden et al) India; Sri Lanka Course developers’ adoption of OER in course development India & Malaysia; Philippines Students’ adoption of OER & impact on achievement Chile Institutions’ adoption of OER curriculum Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia School teachers’ adoption of OER & impact on pedagogical practices Colombia Afghanistan School teachers and pupils and higher education lecturers and students’ adoption of OER Pakistan Baseline studies of educational expenditure Chile, Colombia, Uruguay South Africa ROER4D -18 studies HIgher education Schooling HE or schools
- 4. Meta-synthesis question 4 Whether, how,for whom and under what circumstances can engagement with open educational practices and resources provide equitable access to relevant, high quality, affordable and sustainable education in the Global South?
- 5. ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework Meta synthesis Thepurpose of a meta- synthesis is to integrate themes and insights gained from individual qualitative research into a higher order synthesis that promotes broad understandings of the entire body of research, while still respecting the integrity of the individual reports (Scruggs, Mastropieri & McDuffie, 2007, 395) Challenges - Studies held different philosophical positions Some studies adopted a fairly positivist view of research, others more interpretivist, and a few explicitly critical realist. Likewise studies drew on a wide variety of conceptual and theoretical frameworks
- 6. Meta-synthesis activities The chaptersproduced by the ROER4D sub-projects therefore serve as the “data objects” for this meta-synthesis which involves a number of stages, including: 1. reading through draft and final versions 2. engaging directly with the researchers 3. using a literature-informed set of themes from the meta-level conceptual framework 4. ingesting the pre-peer reviewed chapter into the qualitative software analysis tool, Nvivo 5. using this framework to code the themes in the findings of each of the studies and then adjust the framework 6. identify the most frequently occurring themes & mechanisms of change 7. distilling insights and recommendations 6 Meta synthesis
- 7. Educational Challenges ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework7 Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION: What are the specific educational challenges in each region and country to which open educational practices and resources are a possible response?
- 8. 8 Educational Challenges Educational challenges facedin the various regions, countries, institutions, departments by educators and students in the formal education sector (schooling and higher education) need to be identified up-front so that there is a benchmark for judging the impact of the take-up/adoption of open educational practices and resources For example: ● In Chile student protests have expressed the need for equal accessibility to quality education as a civil right (Westermann, et al., in press) ● In Colombia the wide cultural diversity necessitates the recognition of local ethnic identities in learning materials (Sáenz Rodríguez, et al., in press) ● In war-torn Afghanistan access to educational materials in local languages is a major difficulty for educators (Oates, et al., in press) ● In East Africa educators have access to limited and outdated proprietary teaching materials (Wolfenden, et al., in press)
- 9. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework9 Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION: Which structural and cultural conditions are shaping, and being shaped by individuals and/or institutions’ uptake of open educational practices and resources?
- 10. 10 Contextual factors whichinclude both structural and cultural dimensions, can serve to enable or constrain individuals’ (e.g. educators or learners) or institutions’ (e.g. managers or policy-makers) uptake/ adoption of open educational practices and resources. Structural conditions (e.g. institutional policies, systems, infrastructure) for example: ● Infrastructure: In East Africa impediments to uptake (and especially reuse) of OER include deficiencies in physical infrastructure (e.g. interrupted power supply, insufficient devices and unstable, expensive connectivity) Wolfenden, et al., in press) ● Language: In Afghanistan (Oates et al., in press), Mongolia (Zagdragchaa & Trotter, in press) and Pakistan (Waqar et al., in press) limited number of OER available in local languages means that a great deal of creation and/or translation of OER is still needed Cultural circumstances (e.g. norms, ideas, beliefs), for example: ● Institutional culture: In South Africa institutional culture mediates the role that policy plays in academics’ decision-making (Cox & Trotter, 2016) ● Disciplinary norms: In the 9 country cross-regional survey university lecturers from the Natural Sciences reported more OER use compared to those in the Humanities & Arts (de Oliveria Neto, et al., in press) Contextual Factors
- 11. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework11 Meta synthesis Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION Who are the key agents whose decision-making influences the uptake of open educational practices and resources?
- 12. 12 Agents Agential factors referto the choices that individuals’ (e.g. educators and/or learners) or institutions’ (e.g. institutional personnel and/or government policy- makers) make in relation to open educational practices and resources. The term ‘agent’ (Archer 2000) has been used deliberately to indicate the intentional freedom to act exhibited by stakeholders and their take-up (or not) of open educational practices and resources in response to the structural and cultural (Archer 2003) conditions they face. For example, individual choices are displayed in: ● Educators being more willing to share materials informally (e.g. via email) rather than upload them to a public repository/website (Karunanayaka & Naidu, in press) For example, institutional choices are displayed in: ● Institutional personnel financially supporting the development of OER- based Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (Czerniewicz, et al., in press)
- 13. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework13 Meta synthesis Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION Which open educational practices and resources are most readily adopted, or not, and why might this be so (ie. what is the underlying causes or generative mechanisms)? OEP and OER
- 14. 14 OEP and OER For OERto exist there must be prior open educational practices in the form of individual or collaborative creation, curation, and sharing (distribution) processes, in order for others to locate, copy, adapt (revise or remix), re-curate, and re-circulate (re-distribute). For OER to be optimised and sustainable, there must be subsequent open educational practices We need to identify which of these practices bring about changes or stasis (no change) with respect to the availability, quality and affordability of materials as well as the quality of teacher pedagogy and student learning. For example ● Creation: In the 3 regions, creation of OER by university lecturers is not yet a common practice (majority do not use open licences) (De Oliveira Neto et al., in press) ● Copying (use “as is”): In the study in Pakistan over 80% of university lecturers use the original materials as-is (Waqar et al, in press) ● Reuse: Many teachers drew on multiple online resources, but were unclear which of these resources were “open” and used them regardless as the relevance of the resources were more important than their licensing conditions (Wolfenden, et al., in press)
- 15. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework15 Meta synthesis Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION What is the impact of the adoption of open educational practices & resources on the availability of affordable, relevant & quality of learning & teaching materials, on teacher pedagogy, learner outcomes, & affordability & sustainability of education? OEP and OERImpact
- 16. 16 Impact Impact can seenas the change that is preferred and promoted (e.g. improve quality of teacher pedagogy). The meta-synthesis will surface key how the open educational practices bring about these changes or not. For example: ● Availability of relevant materials: Teachers have contributed OER to a provincial OER repository in India (Kasinathan & Ranganathan, in press) and teachers have access to materials in local languages in the Darakht-e Danesh (“Knowledge Tree”) OER Library in Afghanistan (Oates et al., in press) ● Quality of teacher pedagogy: A study of trainee teachers in Sri Lanka reports greater collaboration and creativity in their pedagogical practices (Karunanayaka & Naidu, in press) ● Affordability: Cost-savings are quite difficult to establish as baseline data on government expenditure on teaching and learning materials in the school sector is not always available in sufficient detail to undertake a cost- analysis (Toledo & Botero, in press; Goodier, in press), but a higher education institution has shown that the use of OER can reduce development costs by about 10% (Bonito, et al., in press)
- 17. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework17 Meta synthesis Meta synthesis KEYQUESTION To what degree is the uptake of open educational practices and resources addressing access & economic factors, community participation, and personal & collective empowerment? OEP and OERImpact Import
- 18. 18 Import What is deemedto be an ‘impact’ or social change is “always expressed from a perspectival vantage point” (Archer 2013:4) and is inescapably value-laden and there likely to be contested. In other words from whose ideological perspective is the degree of OEP&R uptake being judged. Drawing on the framework proposed by Gidley et al (2010) on social inclusion, the meta-analysis plots the degrees of social transformation along a “spectrum of ideologies involving - from narrowest to most encompassing - the neoliberal focus on access and economic factors, the social justice focus on community participation and the human potential focus on personal and collective empowerment from positive psychology and critical/transformative pedagogies” (2010:6)
- 19. Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesis framework- theoretical lens summary19 Meta synthesis Meta synthesis OEP and OERImpact Import Archer’s (2003) concepts of structure, culture and agency Archer’s concepts of morphogenesis and morphostasis Gidley et al (2010) concepts of access, participation & empowerment
- 20. OEP and OER Educational Challenges Contextual Factors Agents ROER4D Meta-synthesisframework - Storyline20 Meta synthesis Rapidly increasing need for and cost of education is restricting access to quality education & impinges upon ... … structural and cultural factors that influence and are influenced by … … choices made by learners, educators, institutional personnel and/or government decision-makers ... … to engage in open educational practices and resources (or not) which may (or may not) bring about … Impact … equitable access, improvement in the quality of materials, teaching and learning and cost reductions of schooling and tertiary education … Import … resulting in social change (or stasis) according to which ideological perspective this is being judged.
- 21. 21 ROER4D - Clustersof empirical studies South America Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) South & Southeast Asia Survey of students & lecturers adoption of OER Brazil, Chile & Colombia (De Oliveira Neto et al) Ghana, Kenya & South Africa (De Oliveira Neto et al) India, Indonesia & Malaysia (De Oliveira Neto et al); Pakistan (Waqar et al) Lecturers’ adoption of OER (including MOOCs) & impact on pedagogical practices South Africa (Cox & Trotter; Czerniewicz et al) India (Mishra & Singh), Mongolia (Zagdragchaa & Trotter) Teacher educators’ adoption of OER & impact on pedagogical practices Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius (Wolfenden et al) India (Kasinathan and Ranganathan), Sri Lanka (Karunanayaka) & Naidu Course developers’ adoption of OER in course development India & Malaysia (Menon et al), Philippines (Bonito et al) Students’ adoption of OER & impact on achievement Chile (Westermann) Institutions’ adoption of OER curriculum Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia (Adala) School teachers’ adoption of OER & impact on pedagogical practices Colombia (Sanez et al) Afghanistan (Oates et al) School teachers and pupils and higher education lecturers and students’ adoption of OER Pakistan (Waqar et al) Baseline studies of educational expenditure Chile, Colombia, Uruguay South Africa (Goodier) ROER4D -18 studies HIgher education Schooling HE & schools
- 22. Citation and attribution Hodgkinson-Williams,C.A. (2016). The adoption and impact of OEP and OER in the Global South: Theoretical, conceptual & methodological framework for the ROER4D project meta-synthesis. Open Educational Global Conference, Cape Town, South Africa 8-10 March 2017. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/ROER4D/ 22 Acknowledgements Special thanks to ROER4D researchers for their input and to Sarah Goodier for the original diagram. Thanks to Laurent Elder & Matt Smith from the IDRC and Patricia Arinto for critique of the first version of this presentation.