Introduction
As a philosophical concept, open education argues education should be affordable, inclusive, equitable, and relevant to learners (Roberts 2020). More specifically, open education asks questions such as “whose knowledge is considered valuable?”, “who is centered in education systems?”, and “why do curricula center certain histories?” (Lambert 2018; Roberts 2020; Bali et al. 2020). Furthermore, open education promotes the use of accessible resources, such as open educational resources (OERs), and the adoption of open publishing practices to address systemic barriers to information and education. The egalitarian ideas behind open education point to an emerging effort for centering social justice in open educational practices and values, as several social justice frameworks for open education currently exist (Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter 2018; Lambert 2018).
This paper argues one way to center social justice in open education is to correct its historical discourses about the influences of the field. For example, the place of Black feminist pedagogy is clear in open education. This is not to claim Black feminist pedagogy is the only framework to articulate similar values, but an influential pedagogy to acknowledge and connect to the advancements of open education. Yet, popular and scholarly discourses seldom acknowledge how Black feminism influences open education’s philosophical roots and aspirations, which undermines attempts to position open education as a social justice agent. Moreover, not acknowledging the impact of women of color scholars’ labor surrounding the notion of openness in the academy acts against social justice aspirations and packages open education in normative values of whiteness (Croft and Brown 2020).
Open education is not limited to issues of college affordability, open educational resources, open access, and open science (Bali et al. 2020). The idea of openness, its ideologies surrounding the role of the classroom, interrogating institutional frameworks, policies, and procedures, is rooted in Black feminist liberation. The purpose of this paper is to center Black feminism in open education discourse and situate it within the broader open education history. This article does not argue that Black feminist pedagogy predates other influences of the open education movement; rather it is arguing Black feminist praxis should be a part of the mapping of open education history as open education is connected with other liberatory education movements. The latter part of the paper will discuss the benefits of centering Black feminist pedagogy to the open education movement’s aspirations to be a social justice agent.
What is Open Education? A Broad History
The history of open education is sometimes unclear because there lacks an agreed upon definition of “open” or “openness” and where that has taken place in the history of education in the U.S. context. This history in open education is often tied to the impetus of open educational resource (OER) creation, but as aforementioned, open education encompasses more than resources and licenses. Bozkurt and Stracke (2023) argue that open education “strives to shape education into its ideal form by advocating a range of values and principles that would lead to equity and social justice in education by positioning human-centered approaches at the core of its practices” (32). Baker (2017) discusses the presence of openness in the history of education by providing a timeline extending back to the early 20th century, arguing openness has historically placed itself within a matrix of transparency and freedom, “critical concepts guiding many educational design decisions, especially throughout the last century” (133). Baker continues to explain how ideas of openness were articulated in Dewey’s model of education in the 1900s–1930s and in Popper’s Open Society in the 1930s–1950s. During the 1960s and 1970s, there emerged a more critical view of the instructor’s role as traditionally authoritative. This shift made way for more expansive ideas and classroom approaches where ideas of openness and trust in the student’s knowledge and agency in their learning process began to circulate (Baker 2017).
According to Roncevic (2022), open educational resources, materials with open licenses or reside in the public domain that enable learners to adapt, redistribute and retain materials, can be traced as early as the 1970s. Very similar to today’s current OER landscape, Roncevic (2022) argues librarians played an integral role in creating OER infrastructure. They specifically name Project Gutenberg, the first online repository of public domain content, and connect this influence of this project to current OERs. The free software movement beginning in the 1980s also played a role in modern conceptualizations of openness as Baker (2017) notes. OERs became increasingly popular in the early 2000s–2010s partially due to the rising costs of education and course materials (Jenkins et al. 2020). Since textbook costs remain a great concern, students and faculty are looking for commercial textbook alternatives, which might explain how faculty and student awareness of OERs has increased 31% since 2018 (McKenzie 2020).
Problematizing Open Education Historical Discourse
It’s important to note that when historicizing open education as a whole in the U.S., there is a tendency to reduce this history with that of open educational resources. The history of OERs is one component of open education history, and only tells part of the story. When the history of OERs and open source movements becomes the main historical narrative of open education, the interconnectedness of “openness” with other liberatory movements is simplified and even erased. Furthermore, this conflation presents “open” as a new educational phenomenon. For example, Bliss and Smith (2017) claim the open educational resource movement was 15 years old at the time they wrote an article about the history of open educational resources. They specifically reference the contributions of James Spohrer in the 1990s to MERLOT, a free online curriculum for higher education and David Wiley for coining the term “open content.” However, this history focuses primarily on the contributions of white men in open education. Furthermore, it’s critical to ask what happens to modern open education discourse when the history is primarily discussed through the lens of OERs or when OERs are not connected to a deeper history from which they are born. There lies an opportunity to discuss an interconnected history that includes the contributions of marginalized populations in ideas about “openness.”
As aforementioned Baker (2017) attempts to historicize open education through a broader lens. They specifically state, “the roots of openness can be seen in education as far back as the inquisitive efforts of Socrates, and have been noted in several other movements, including monastic border transformation, its link to the enlightenment, and similarities and transformations that occurred in the Open Source Software movement (132).” Yet, in their mentioning of, for example, philosopher Karl Popper and his Open Society concept as a prominent influence in the ideas behind the Open Source movement, a movement that would later have a tremendous impact on current ways of discussing and imagining open education, there is once again an explicit centering of a white Western lens in open education history. Therefore, an important question to contend with asks why “epistemic exclusion,” as Mogadime (2021) calls it, occurs in conversations about the philosophical influences of open education values and praxis. Black feminist voices appear when open education is accurately historicized.
An opportunity to discuss Black feminist pedagogy within the mapping of open education history is when, for example, Baker (2017) discusses the increasingly critical view of teachers as the sole authoritative figures in the classroom that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. A closer look at this time period acknowledges assumptions of authoritative figures are greatly racialized and gendered (hooks 1994; Omolade 1987; Nyache, 2016). Furthermore, knowledge considered “neutral” is often seen through a white Western lens and Black women and other women of color have long interrogated notions of “authority” and the “classroom” through a social justice lens. As Hardy (2023) illustrates, Black women have a tradition of using education as an activist tool to illuminate the impact of systemic oppression on their lived experiences. This tradition, as Hardy notes, extends back to the early 19th century where Black women educators, such as Ida B. Wells and Alice Ruth Moore, used activist pedagogies to address specific issues affecting the daily experiences of Black women and resist the normalization of white supremacy.
Additionally, Baker (2017) refers to Herbert Kohl as an example of open approaches to classroom instruction, one that is subsequently included in the broader history of open education. They reference “a community-like classroom that he was able to develop by learning to listen, becoming involved with creating things in the classroom, and working together with the students in an open classroom” (2017, 135). Yet Black woman educators such as Omolade (1987) and hooks (1994) used similar methods in their classroom. hooks specifically argues for “an ongoing recognition that everyone influences the classroom dynamic, that everyone contributes. These contributions are resources…to hear each other, to listen to one another, is an exercise in recognition. It also ensures that no student remains invisible in the classroom (1994, 8, 41).
Baker (2017) does not mention Black women educators and their practices as inspirations for open values and practices. Furthermore, Black feminist educators like bell hooks draw from other influences such as Paulo Freire (1970) who discussed the idea of transcending banking systems of education, or educational approaches that position students as passive consumers of information. However, even those influences on Black feminist foremothers’ conceptualizations of transformative pedagogies are not mentioned in the history of open education. There are few scholars who briefly make this critical pedagogy connection and clearly state the influence of Black feminist scholars and other key scholars on the ideas that underpin open pedagogy. DeRosa and Jhangiani (2017), for example, do acknowledge the influence of critical pedagogies in what they refer to as open pedagogy, “sharing common investments with many other historical and contemporary schools of constructivist and critical digital pedagogy,” and specifically name bell hooks as an influential scholar in open pedagogical thought (par 7). Moreover, Adams and Dannick (2022) as well as Cannon-Rech (2022) reference Black feminist pedagogical thought leaders in their discussions about the intersection between social justice and open education. This is an example of how open education scholars can appropriately situate open pedagogy and other open ideas to Black feminist foremothers, as Seiferle-Valencia (2020) states, without making open pedagogy and other open ideas appear as an entirely new phenomenon. Currently, this practice is still not the norm in open education scholarship.
Theoretical Framework
The paper uses Black feminist pedagogy as a framework to connect its influence to current open educational values and pedagogy. Black feminist pedagogy is a liberatory pedagogy used to enact social change by encouraging an active interrogation of traditional curriculum and dominant education systems, exposing learners to an “Afrocentric worldview” (Joseph 1995, 95). Black feminist pedagogy stems from the labor of Black educators in the classroom, developed as an act of resistance to an education system based on the normalization of white Western culture and histories in the learning process (James-Gallaway and Turner 2021). Furthermore, Black feminist pedagogy is born out of Black feminist thought and tradition and positions Black women as “knowledge agents” (Higginbotham 1997). This pedagogical approach embodies a non-essentialist view of Black women, understanding the multiplicity of Black women’s experiences depending on class and sexual identity (Joseph 1995; Omolade 1987; Crenshaw 1991). The Combahee River Collective (1977) guides much of the intersectional approach situated within Black feminist pedagogy, where they specifically state:
The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. (Combahee River Collective, par 1)
Henry (2005) argues there are three themes of Black feminist educational critiques: 1) Education systems are patriarchal, there to benefit the white elite. 2) White feminist pedagogy ignores intersectionality as it relates to race and class. 3) Black educational thought privileges patriarchy and ignores the racialized and gendered realities of Black women and girls. However, Black feminist pedagogy does not argue for a curriculum just about Black women or Black girls, but for a pedagogy stemming from a particular consciousness that leads to the asking of specific questions about knowledge, histories reflected and excluded in the curriculum, and the general structure of education systems in maintaining oppression and unequal power dynamics (Henry 2005). As Henry stated more specifically, “Black feminist pedagogy is an important and overlooked perspective for educational theorists, as it encompasses a critique of traditional curricula, and pedagogical practices” (2005, 89).
Omolade (1994) argued education programs do not create space for Black women’s experiences, despite the power and value of these experiences in becoming effective teachers. More recently, Evans-Winters (2019) reinforced this claim, arguing traditional education systems continued to devalue the labor and lived experiences Black women brought into the academic space. While Black feminist pedagogy takes a particular position in centering the experiences of Black women in the classroom, it simultaneously addresses issues relevant to other populations. For example, an educator using Black feminist pedagogy in their classroom might discuss the particular over policing of Black girls in secondary school, while also addressing the disinvestment in public education in the United States, police brutality, the lack of support for educators, and core issues related to educational opportunities. Therefore, Black feminist pedagogy is a valuable framework for not only Black women, but for other groups (Henry 2005).
Similarly, the benefits of open education values and practices are applicable beyond those who, for example, use OERs in their classroom or want to publish their research in open access journals to make their scholarship and teaching more accessible. Open educational practices are defined as “practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices” (Cronin 2017, 1). Like other critical pedagogical practices, open educational practices have the ability to help students develop an in-depth understanding of inequities and ways to enact transformative change (Bali et al. 2020). This paper argues Black feminist thought influences some of the approaches in open educational practices, more specifically open pedagogy.
There are various definitions of open pedagogy, leaving room for contesting its parameters (Croft and Brown 2020). However, according to DeRosa and Jhangiani (2017), open pedagogy is a teaching practice that expands the position of students from content consumers to content creators through the production of openly licensed materials. The intention behind open pedagogical approaches is to develop more transferable skills and critical consciousness about dominant knowledge creation processes (Croft and Brown 2020). Examples of open pedagogy applications in the classroom include students co-creating an open textbook with their professor/teacher and students co-creating exam/quiz questions under instructor guidance that are openly available for other educators and students to use (DeRosa and Jhangiani 2017).
Open education adopts language that articulates Black feminist pedagogical aspirations. For example, open pedagogical practices are often described in the context of “disposable” vs. “renewable” assignments, terms Wiley (2015) developed. Disposable assignments are those that lack real application or value to the larger community beyond the classroom space. Those assignments tend to be traditional assignments in a classroom setting such as exams, quizzes, and some theoretical papers. Furthermore, disposable assignments position students as “knowledge buckets,” promoting learning strategies such as memorization and the regurgitation of class content. These strategies are less likely to lead to long-term learning and critical consciousness (Paskevicius & Irvine, 2019). Conversely, renewable assignments are those where students create work that is open licensed with the understanding that the work is for a wider audience beyond their classmates or their professor (Wiley 2015). Examples include creating websites with openly licensed content, public artifacts, or a new open resource or combining such materials with another openly licensed resource (Wiley and Hilton, 2018). Renewable assignments position students as an integral part of the knowledge creation process and affirm the value of their knowledge, lived experiences, and histories (Farrow et al. 2020). Similarly, Black feminist pedagogy seeks to challenge dominant epistemologies and create liberatory pathways in education.
The Connection Between Black Feminist Pedagogy and Open Pedagogy
Much of what drives this open pedagogical practice, critical engagement in the learning process interrogating the position of educators and students in the classroom, enabling a critical consciousness about dominant epistemologies, can be linked to critical pedagogies like Black feminist pedagogy. Black feminist influences are present in the notion that there are transactional assignments that lead to less critical consciousness and more communal assignments that involve co-creation and iterative practices. Both open pedagogy and Black feminist pedagogy seek to challenge the role of both educators and students as well the utility of assignments. Unlike traditional pedagogical approaches, Black feminist pedagogy envisions educators as guides in the learning process, rather than gatekeepers of information (Omolade 1987). More specifically, Omolade (1987) discusses their methodology in disrupting traditional power dynamics in their classroom when they became an adjunct instructor in the late 1970s. They state:
When I am teaching history and politics, my students can bring their experiences, insights, and questions to classroom discussions. [...] The creation of an intellectual partnership, a mutual sharing of information and experiences, lessens the power imbalance and class differences between instructor and students […]. My role as clarifier—almost consultant—to the students' learning process has become politically and pedagogically comfortable and consistent with my task of imparting the course content and creating a learning environment that the minds of Black women, and the minds of others about Black women. (Omolade 35)
Open pedagogy shares the same aspiration, that which seeks to challenge classroom power dynamic through open practices. Therefore, it is important to discuss its connections to Black feminist praxis. Seiferle-Valencia (2020) is one of the first to make this assertion by specifically claiming, “conventional histories and scholarly contextualization of open movements do not connect open pedagogy to liberatory women of color feminist praxis and scholarship on education” (101). Furthermore, Seiferle-Valencia (2020) argues how current efforts to create a more socially just open education is not entirely new and reflects a Black feminist pedagogy. Black feminist pedagogical rhetoric is not only relevant to open education, but essential to conversations about open values, practices, and pedagogy. This paper attempts to deepen the analysis by Seiferle-Valencia (2020) and argues to understand classroom approaches from a Black feminist standpoint as discussed by hooks (1994) and Henry (2005) is to also understand open pedagogy. Henry (2005) further explained how Black feminist pedagogy “underscores the interconnectedness of student, teacher, and the entire knowledge-production processes within and outside of the classroom, as well as the power of pedagogy to change consciousness” (97). Black feminist pedagogy challenges the notion of who can contribute to the knowledge creation process and who has the “authority” to participate, disrupting traditional positioning and power dynamics between students and educators. This argument extends on hooks’ (1994) description of the classroom as a place of radical disruption, one that encourages the exploration of liberatory teaching practices and a transgression of traditional boundaries.
Emergent Conclusions
Utilizing a Black feminist pedagogical lens also helps to interrogate popular conceptualizations behind open educational resources (OERs) that are not inherently embedded in social justice or liberation. For example, Wiley (2021) created a widely used concept to explain the use of OERs, referred to as the 5Rs of OERs. Wiley argues a user should be able to retain, reuse, redistribute, remix, and revise a resource in order for it to be considered an open resource. However, examining the 5Rs of OERs from a Black feminist lens reveals how this conceptualization is not necessarily rooted in social justice, a key component of Black feminist pedagogical tradition. It is not to claim that Black feminist pedagogy is against, for example, revising or remixing open educational resources to be more relevant and inclusive of Black women’s experiences and other marginalized experiences, but rather calls for the practices to be explicitly antiracist and antisexist as well as more consideration for whether it challenges or upholds education systems based on white, patriarchal norms (Seiferle-Valencia 2020).
Hollich (2022) explains how conceptualizing the parameters of OERs based solely on license definitions do not always consider necessary protections for marginalized communities. For example, an author from a marginalized background might have reasons for using No-Derivative license (no adaptations to the original content) on an OER they created. Those authors might desire to “tell their stories in their own words” and “prefer their work to not be remixed, revised, or altered for fear of being taken out of context,” but it would not be considered open under the 5R standard if they use a No-Derivative license for their work (Hollich 2022, 9). As aforementioned, Black feminist pedagogical application of the 5Rs of OERs would consider ways to center Black women’s epistemologies in open practices, how Black women and girls can tell their own stories through open practices, while also considering conditions in which altering their stories or work for the spirit of “open” would be harmful. This is particularly important considering how Black women’s work is commonly weaponized and less likely to be appropriately credited (Walkington 2017). As Loyer (2020) claims, there needs to be more consideration for how current open education assumptions and practices can undermine social justice if it is not situated in a liberatory practice and ideas. “Open for whom?” is a recurring question from scholars attempting to position open education from a more critical consciousness and pedagogy, and Black feminist pedagogy is an important approach to incorporate in this discourse (Kessler et al. 2021).
Incorporating Black feminist pedagogy in open education provides an intentional inclusion of marginalized voices and histories in the curriculum and OER content in a meaningful way. This is particularly promising as both Black feminist pedagogy and open pedagogy call for a disruption in power dynamics between learners and educators and the broadening of knowledge production outside traditional practices. As Nyachae (2016) claims, Black feminist pedagogy encourages learners to embrace “new interpretations of traditional curriculum” for the purposes of developing a critical consciousness of systems of oppression (791). In order for open education to truly be a tool for social justice in education, there should be, as Black feminist pedagogy encourages, an explicit calling out of the invisibility of whiteness, how this operates in curricula and ways it sustains inequities and marginalization (Carter 2007). When advocates tout open education as a mechanism for more equitable and inclusive education, a Black feminist ethos rooted in social justice is critical in this pursuit. All of this provides a blueprint for liberatory pathways in open education, demonstrating the impulse of Black feminist pedagogy in open philosophies.
Using a Black feminist pedagogical lens in open education will also help to develop a more critical approach to discussing the issues of labor in open education. There is a common assumption in open education that labor is just labor, but adopting a Black feminist pedagogical lens helps to reveal how labor is rarely just about labor (Roberts-Crews 2022). Academic labor is intersectional, revealing what Crenshaw (1991) refers to as interlocking systems of oppression. For example, higher education librarians, who are disproportionately women, are often charged with a large amount of the labor in open education, including explaining open licenses, managing grant programs, holding consultations for faculty, and understanding OER publishing (Dai and Carpenter 2020). This labor is expected on top of their non-OER responsibilities (Roberts-Crews 2022). Herein lies a recurring theme in the academy of how work done by women is often invisible and undervalued, yet women are more likely to be overworked than their other gender counterparts (Walkington 2017; Dai and Carpenter 2020). Moreover, this is even more pronounced and precarious for women of color, who experience multiple sites of oppression at the same time due to their racialized and gendered identities (Crenshaw 1991).
Black and other women of color scholars often elevate social justice issues in open education (Roberts-Crews 2022). Within and outside of open education, Black women scholars report engaging in social justice work to survive a system that continues to marginalize their experiences and work (Linder et al. 2021). Yet, Black women and other women of color scholars are in precarious situations for calling out the very systems that oppress them, for doing the work they were hired to do, and with very little protection to do so (Finley et al. 2018). Faculty of color more broadly face particular vulnerabilities while engaging in work that centers social justice, particularly racial justice (Finley et al. 2018). Centering a Black feminist pedagogical lens in open education considers the differing risks of doing such work in open education depending on who is doing this labor. Additionally, connecting Black feminist pedagogy to current open education values and practices also means protecting Black women and other women of color in the open education community who are doing social justice work that puts them at risk in the academy.
Implications to Higher Education
It is worth noting the erasure of Black feminist influences on education discourses is not a new phenomenon; the lack of discussion about the connection between Black feminist pedagogy and open pedagogy and open philosophies is a microcosmic example of how education scholarship continues to uphold Eurocentrism and white normative ways of knowing (Duhaney 2020). Critiques of mainstream feminist pedagogies claim there is an erasure of Black feminism, which mimics white women’s historical attempts to suppress Black women’s voices in feminist conversations and women’s rights movements (Collins 2000; Arya 2012). hooks (1994) argues, “white women ignore the relative absence of black women’s voices, either in the construction of new feminist theory or at feminist gatherings” (104). Black feminists in the classroom were key to the development of liberatory praxis and pedagogies such as anti-racist education; however, there lacks a center of Black feminist pedagogy even in some anti-racist discourses (hooks 1994). In academia, Black feminists continue to resist the overrepresentation of white scholarship in the literature and the argument of this paper furthers this act of resistance (Walkington 2017).
The disconnect between open education conceptualizations and Black feminist pedagogy simply reproduces a common practice in academia that privileges dominant epistemologies and centers whiteness. Open education does not operate in a silo separate from broader higher education systems embedded with systemic inequities. Hollich (2022) argues open educational resources created in North America still overwhelmingly center a white male lens and have relatively limited diversity of topics. If open education advocates truly want to advance social justice not only in open education, but in higher education more broadly, there has to be critical consciousness of how current higher education institutions, practices, and procedures uphold white supremacy as a system and marginalize alternative epistemologies such as Black feminist pedagogy. Furthermore, connecting open education philosophies to Black feminist pedagogy will help common open education discourses move beyond topics related to access and textbook affordability to conversations about how to interrogate oppressive systems and practices in higher education and how open practices are one approach to address this. As Clement (2020) states, “implementing OER in the classroom that are heavily colonized and center a white patriarchal epistemology does nothing to increase or foster equity for marginalized learners. It merely gives marginalized students increased access to an educational environment that continues to systematically devalue them” (par. 1).
There are those who might say they were unaware of Black feminist thought and its influence on critical pedagogies. Yet, this response also provides an opportunity to consider why that is the case and undergo a critical interrogation of socialization in academia. Failure to acknowledge the contributions of Black feminist thought to education philosophies like open education also leaves room for white savior narratives, the notion that somehow the work of white scholars in open education is intended to “save” students of color and other marginalized communities, as if this work has not already been done by Black feminists and other scholars of color. White savior tropes attempt to position open education as a critical pedagogy created by white scholars, yet do not often consider the well-documented histories of critical pedagogies that demonstrate how Black feminists were and still are central to these efforts. This works against social justice labor in higher education. As Hollich (2022) states, “It is important to engage in a dialogue that allows people to envision their own futures and to express their own cultural values in a way where they can feel that their beliefs and practices are being truly honored” (17).
Since the height of the 2020 racial injustice protests following the murder of George Floyd, many higher education institutions have made public commitments to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts or have made claims to center socially just practices and procedures within their organizations (Evatt-Young and Bryson 2021). Open education organizations and advocates have taken a similar stance and have committed to anti-racist education, yet do not reference the work of Black feminists who have been central to anti-racist education (hooks 1994; Evans-Winters 2019). Open education practices, policies, and values are potentially effective tools to achieve social justice outcomes in higher education. Acknowledging the contributions of scholars of color and, more specifically, Black feminists in creating a framework for open education practices and values is one way to make open education more socially just. Furthermore, it is critical to advance marginalized epistemologies in order to truly create justice in academia (Duhaney 2020). Black feminism creates opportunities for open education advocates and practitioners to be more fully engaged in building a more socially just, open education movement.
