Group Admins
Description
This presentation reflects on the potential and affordances of the use of Open Data as Open Educational Resources for education to social cohesion within a critical pedagogy discourse.
With the large migratory flows now witnessed globally, providing social and educational services “for All” is becoming a pressing concern in all regions of the world (Barlett, 2015). Despite all the efforts, children with a migrant and refugee background are increasingly facing a low prospect of accessing adequate education (World Bank, 2014). In particular, the provision of quality education for migrant
children not only depends upon institutional factors such as school quality or support, but also, or most importantly, on the attention to culturally responsive pedagogies and openness to diversity (Barlett, 2015).
Given the many affordances that Open Data (OD) offer to education in general, it is certainly worth exploring how these could support teaching and learning processes for migrant learners and the communities sheltering them. In educational contexts, OD can be understood and used as OERs to engage learners in collaborative activities aimed at critically analysing contemporary real-world problems. The idea is that students can collaboratively construct knowledge by working with, and connecting, various sources and formats of information, including data.
However, we believe that a concerning aspect related to the use of OD in education needs to be explored in parallel. This is indeed a critical subject, concerning a crucial, yet too often neglected, prerequisite in the implementation of OD related interventions in education: the underlying pedagogy. The question then becomes: what pedagogical approach could be adopted in OD related interventions dealing with teaching and learning for migrant learners, their teachers and the school community? We envisage that a critical pedagogy approach could be used to underpin the development of educational activities based on the use of OD coming from real world scenarios, to nurture social cohesion and to educate any potential student to complexity and uncertainty (Morin, 2002).
We will report on a series of case studies of the use of Open Data as OER with a particular focus on inclusion and cohesion themes and objectives. We will reflect on the potential to capitalise on OD, underlied by a Critical Pedagogy approach, in a variety of contexts to support a range of educational outcomes including facilitating participation and social equality.
References:
Barlett, L. (2015). Access and Quality of Education for International Migrant Children. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015, Education for All 2000-2015: achievements and challenges. UNESCO. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002324/232474e.pdf
Morin, E. (2002). Seven complex lessons in education for the future. Paris: UNESCO.
World Bank. (2014). Education in the Middle East and North Africa . Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/region/mena/brief/education-in-mena
