Open education as a āheterotopia of desireā
Published | April 2015 |
Journal | Learning, Media and Technology Volume 40, Issue 3, Pages 310-327 |
Publisher | Routledge |
ABSTRACT
The movement towards āopennessā in education has tended to position itself as inherently democratising, radical, egalitarian and critical of powerful gatekeepers to learning. While āopennessā is often positioned as a critique, I will argue that its mainstream discourses ā while appearing to oppose large-scale operations of power ā in fact reinforce a fantasy of an all-powerful, panoptic institutional apparatus. The human subject is idealised as capable of generating higher order knowledge without recourse to expertise, a canon of knowledge or scaffolded development. This highlights an inherent contradiction between this movement and critical educational theory which opposes narratives of potential utopian futures, offering theoretical counterpositions and data which reveal diversity and complexity and resisting attempts at definition, typology and fixity. This argument will be advanced by referring to Gourlay and Oliver's one-year longitudinal qualitative multimodal journaling and interview study of student day-to-day entanglements with technologies in higher education, which was combined with a shorter study focused on academic staff engagement (see article for full text reference). Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives, I will conclude that allegedly āradicalā claims of the āopennessā movement in education may in fact serve to reinforce rather than challenge utopic thinking, fantasies of the human, and monolithic social categories, fixity and power, and as such may be seen as indicative of a āheterotopia of desireā.Keywords | Foucault · heterotopias · Latour · OERs · sociomateriality |
Refereed | Yes |
DOI | 10.1080/17439884.2015.1029941 |
URL | https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2015.1029941 |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
AVAILABLE FILES
Viewed by 35 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.










Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
How Do AI Educators Use Open Educational Resources? A Cross-Sectoral Case Study on OER for AI Education
Rampelt, Florian; Ruppert, Raffael; Schleiss, Johannes; Mah, Dana-Kristin; et al.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy is essential for society as a whole. While general frameworks and resources to support self-directed learning on AI are widely available, research on how to support AI educators, ...
Match: education
Meeting the challenges of higher education in India through open educational resources: policies, practices, and implications.
Thakran, Archana; Sharma, Ramesh C.
Over the past two decades, the education sector in India has undergone a substantial transformation. Recent advances in technology have provided access to high quality educational resources and information on the ...
Match: education
Open Education: Introduction to selected papers
Gil-Jaurena, InƩs
This issue of Open Praxis compiles selected papers presented at the Open Education Consortium Global Conference, held in Cape Town (South Africa) on March 8-10, 2017. Additionaly, the Innovative Practice section ...
Match: education
European education, training and youth forum: Report 2015
European Education, Training and Youth Forum
Key messages from the Forum
1 Summary of the sessions, panels and workshops
1.1 Opening session
1.2 Innovative ideas for education, training and youth
1.2.1 TED-like talks
1.2.2 Clare Ryan, TED-like talk on ...
Match: education
Impact of OER in Teacher Education
Cummings-Clay, Denise
The purpose of this research study, which employed a quantitative research design, was to determine if there was a difference in the grades achieved by students who were enrolled in an entry-level Foundations of ...
Match: education
ICDE media release- December 10, 2014
International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE)
A press release relating the results from discussions at the ICDE - UNESCO Policy Forum in Bali, November 2014.
The "Promises" of online higher education: Profits
Campaign for the Future of Higher Education
With so much national focus on the āpromisesā of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is bigāVery Bigābusiness. ...
Match: education
Tackling inequalities through tertiary distance education in sub-Saharan Africa: A general overview
Adekanmbi, Gbolagade
Although tertiary education in Africa preceded developments in Europe and the West, the growth of the modern African University has not been without its challenges. These have included, among others, funding problems, ...
Match: education
OER copyright and licensing toolkit: A guide for higher education institutions interested in creating and using Open Educational Resources
South African Institute for Distance Education; OER Africa
This toolkit is aimed at higher education stakeholders who are working with Open Educational Resources (OER). It explains the notion of copyright and describes the different licensing options available to the ...
Match: education
New Pathways to Learning: Leveraging the Use of OERs to Support Non-formal Education
Olcott Jr, Don
The growth of non-formal education is expanding teaching and learning pathways for the delivery of global education. This growth, in concert with the expanded use of Open Educational Resources (OERs), is creating a ...
Match: education