Who Benefits from the Public Good? How OER Is Contributing to the Private Appropriation of the Educational Commons

Abstract

The idea of Open Educational Resources (OER) has a history and is embedded in social contexts that influence its practice. To get a handle on tensions between different conceptualizations of “open” we discuss some of the battles surrounding the usage of the term. We note the origin of the concept of OER and how the emergence of the OER movement fits into the discourse of educational improvements through technologies and techniques. We argue that there is a relation between an uncritical stance toward technology and the appropriation of education activities by private oligopolies, a phenomenon that could be mitigated by a larger awareness of recent history and current sociotechnical analysis. We point out how these dilemmas play out in the Brazilian context of the implementation of OER in public policies and conclude by mentioning some programs and projects that point to the way forward.