OEGlobal 2024

The Open for Antiracism Program (OFAR) supports faculty to leverage OER and Open Pedagogy to make their teaching antiracist. Participants learn to use existing OER, and improve upon it by adding underrepresented viewpoints and diverse and inclusive content to their classroom materials, in collaboration with their students.

While the setting of OFAR is US community colleges, we wish to use the setting of OEGlobal 24 in Brisbane to learn how our approach can (or cannot) be applied in other settings, for example addressing the challenges and benefits of utilizing OER and Open Pedagogies within indigenous and tribal colleges and communities.

To participate in OFAR, faculty teams of up to six instructors from a single college apply together. A letter of support from an administrator is requested to ensure that leadership at participating institutions are engaged and available for end-of-program feedback. Outcomes over multiple semesters for participating faculty are collected and analyzed to determine if implementing antiracist open pedagogy impacted student success, particularly for traditionally underserved students. Annual research on faculty and student experiences in the program document impact and improve program design. For example, after participating in the program, participants report significantly greater confidence in discussing topics of race and racism with their students.

During this interactive session, you will learn about the changes that faculty make in creating antiracist classrooms and how their participation impacts their home institutions. We are particularly interested in understanding how the OFAR model of leveraging OER and Open Pedagogy can (or cannot) support teaching transformations beyond the US, and/or with First Nations peoples.

Program leadership from the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) and College of the Canyons will ask attendees to share how their institutions are engaging in inclusive and antiracist teaching practices to improve student success particularly for traditionally marginalized and underserved students.

The interactive discussion will conclude with the question of how Open Education can more effectively engage with antiracist and inclusive pedagogy.



Included in [Session 4A]: Anti-racism (workshop)

References
Daly, U.T., Glapa-Grossklag, J., Nguyen, A. and Valenzuela, I. (2022), "Open for antiracism: supporting educators to use open education for antiracist teaching", Journal for Multicultural Education, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 456-490. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-02-2022-0020

Author Keywords
Antiracism, Social Justice, Community colleges

In an increasingly diverse and interconnected world, fostering intercultural and cross-cultural understandings within educational settings are essential for promoting social justice and equity is more crucial than ever. This presentation delves into strategies for building educator capacity in intercultural and cross-cultural understanding, emphasizing the importance of intersectional, anti-racist, and decolonizing approaches to education to effectively integrate into their teaching practices. By highlighting collaborative efforts with primary and tertiary educational sectors, this session offers examples and considerations necessary to navigate and address the complexities of inequity in their classrooms. The aim of this presentation is to develop and evaluate strategies for building educator capacity in intercultural and cross-cultural understanding, focusing on integrating social justice and anti-racist pedagogy to create inclusive and equitable learning environments. This session seeks to identify effective collaborative efforts and partnerships that enhance these educational practices.

Intercultural and Cross-Cultural Understanding in Social Justice Education

Intercultural and cross-cultural understanding are foundational to fostering inclusive educational environments. This section examines the theoretical underpinnings of intercultural competence and its significance in social justice education. We explore how educators can develop an ability to recognize, respect, and value diverse cultural perspectives, fostering an inclusive environment. Practical strategies, such as incorporating diverse literature, facilitating dialogues that draw on learner’s funds of knowledge, and promoting global citizenship education, are discussed to illustrate how educators can integrate these principles into their practice.

Intersectional, Anti-Racist, and Decolonizing Pedagogies

The principles of intersectionality, anti-racism, and decolonization are essential for addressing the multifaceted nature of inequity and injustice in education. This section focuses on how educators can apply these frameworks to create more equitable and just learning environments. By understanding the interconnectedness of race, gender, class, and other social categories, educators can develop more nuanced and effective teaching strategies. The presentation highlights key concepts of anti-racist pedagogy, including the examination of systemic biases and the promotion of critical consciousness. Additionally, we discuss decolonizing education practices, which involve challenging colonial narratives and centering Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in the curriculum.

Collaborative Efforts and Partnerships

Effective capacity building in social justice education requires collaboration among various stakeholders. This section showcases successful partnerships with educators and community members who have contributed to the development and implementation of anti-racist and decolonizing curricula. Insights from educators who have actively engaged in these collaborations provide practical examples of how these partnerships can enhance professional development initiatives and support educators in addressing racism and promoting equity.

Practical Strategies for Educators

Building on the theoretical and collaborative foundations, this section offers practical strategies for educators to implement in their courses. These strategies include designing inclusive curricula that reflect diverse cultural experiences, creating safer spaces for open dialogue and critical discussions, and employing culturally responsive practices. We also explore the role of reflective practice in helping educators to continuously examine and improve their own biases and teaching methods. By integrating these strategies, educators can create learning environments that not only acknowledge but also celebrate diversity and promote social justice.



Included in [Session 6E]: Anti-racism

Author Keywords
First Nations, Inclusion, Open educational practices, Social justice, Anti-racism

This presentation argues that decolonising open education is everyone's business. We outline approaches we have learnt from our own experiences, focusing on a project where non-Indigenous and Indigenous staff at La Trobe University collaborated to reimagine an undergraduate open textbook used in the health sciences. We demonstrate how cultural safety reviews can transform open educational resources (OER) to be universally accessible for diverse learners and act as tangible modelling of culturally responsive teaching practices for students to follow from.

Our presentation is from the perspective of non-Indigenous practitioners – from both academic and library cultures - who evolved and learnt how to engage in culturally responsive processes. We describe how these practices support mitigating the onerous burden of labour placed on Indigenous practitioners. Our perspective is distinctive in highlighting how empowering Indigenous open practitioners can cultivate active practices for everyone, in contrast to disempowering and passive practices.

These practices contribute to a paradigm shift that supports the conditions for culturally safe education. The broader significance of this shift is that it:

• Empowers Indigenous people to lead the agenda
• steps towards a holistic approach to incorporate Indigenous knowledges in normalising ways
• reduces the likelihood of tokenism
• values process as equally important to (and constitutive of) product
• embodies Indigenous methodologies into process, underpinned by centring Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing (Brodie et al, 2023)
• transforms non-Indigenous collaborators into accomplices through becoming culturally responsive (Finlay, 2020)
• carves out Third Spaces for generating culturally responsive ways of working that cultivate mutually beneficial two-way learning (Dudgeon & Fielder, 2006)
• enables advocacy to widen these ways of working to challenge to deeply rooted conventional ways of working

Our presentation will describe key challenges we encountered:

• Understanding the limitations of an “additive” approach that reduces Indigenous knowledges to inessential, extracurricular content
• Identifying how cultural safety is different to both cultural responsiveness and cultural awareness
• Distinguishing between Indigenisation and Decolonisation
• Recognising how power relations operate between non-Indigenous and Indigenous staff

We recommend emergent principles from our experience that can guide open education practitioners to widen culturally responsive practices for supporting knowledge Decolonisation projects. These include:

• Accepting the possibility of unintentionally “doing the wrong thing” as an active alternative to guilt-based paralysis
• "doing the work” independently without making reckless assumptions about one’s own knowledge of Indigenous knowledges
• thoughtfully approaching Indigenous collaborators – how, when, why, and what the “ask” is
• The meaning of yarns and how they cultivate open and respectful relationships between diverse groups

We will showcase the end product of these ways of working, highlight the culturally safe features of our open textbook, and explain how this benefits the health sciences curriculum. We conclude this presentation by outlining our next steps and posing key questions arising from our continuing learning for the community to discuss.



Included in [Session 6E]: Anti-racism

References
Brodie, T., Howard, N. J., Pearson, O., Canuto, K., Brown, A., & Advisory Group (2023). Enhancement of scoping review methodology to reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 47(6), 100096. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anzjph.2023.100096 Dudgeon, P., & Fielder, J. (2006). Third spaces within tertiary places: Indigenous Australian studies. Journal of community & applied social psychology, 16(5), 396-409. Finlay, S. (2020). Where do you fit? Tokenistic, ally—or accomplice. Croakey Health Media. Retrieved December, 9, 2022.

Author Keywords
Cultural safety, Culturally responsive practices, Open educational practices, Indigenous, First Nations, Open textbooks, Health sciences

With the establishment of a Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry in Queensland under recently enacted the Path to Treaty Act 2023, government agencies, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the broader community will embark on an unprecedented journey of discovery and reflection as they deepen their understanding of the impacts and effects of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities and culture.

Meaningful truth-telling and healing is built on this understanding of Queensland’s shared history and a transparent assessment of the impacts and effects of colonisation. Historical records will play an important role in revealing the truth about the impacts of past legislation, and government policy and practices, on the lives of First Nations peoples and their communities and culture.

As the custodian of the largest documentary heritage collection about Queensland, Queensland State Archives recognises that many of the records contained within the collection provide vital evidence of this past and is committed to uncover the untold and unrecognised history of Queensland.

Since the arrival of Europeans in Queensland, colonial systems have been forced upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The colonial records that document this contain highly sensitive personal and/or cultural information, and access to these records has often been restricted by the relevant government agencies. These restrictions can remain in place for a very long time, limiting access to these records and the information contained within them. Consequently, it is more difficult for the Inquiry, First Nations individuals and communities, and the respective government agencies to understand what these records reveal about our colonial past – it is more difficult to make this open and everyone’s business.

This presents a significant challenge for Queensland State Archives and the government agencies involved in administering access to these records. How do we facilitate access to these records while still respecting the personal information contained within them? How do we facilitate access to these records while honouring and respecting the culturally sensitive information contained within them? How do we open access while working within the constraints of existing legislation? How do we support the aspirations of the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry in understanding our shared history and documenting the impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples when access to these records is restricted? How do we partner with our stakeholders to help us provide access to this information?

In this presentation, Queensland State Archives will explore some of the strategies being implemented to make this information more discoverable and support a more transparent approach to accessing these records so that Queensland’s colonial past and its impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is better understood



Included in [Session 6E]: Anti-racism

Author Keywords
Data sovereignty, First Nations Perspectives, Open access publishing

Maskwacis Cultural Colege’s vision statement is  “Center for excellence in Academics and Cree culture.” A case study of the use of open pedagogy in teaching and learning at the local First Nations College will be presented.

Two eyed seeing approach was used in SOCI 1500 online class by braiding western and Indigenous ways of teaching by a racialized settler instructor working with an on reserve First Nations college. 400 minutes of Open Educational Resources (OER) videos were created by collaborating with Subject Matter Experts. Production of the OER syllabics book was based on Three kittens' open book from Norway's Children's Digital library.

The success and challenges of using open education practices will be illustrated. Openness is embedded in Nehiyaw plains Cree ways of knowing by using concepts of Newaykomakanak, Wahkotowin, Kiyam and Pastahowin.



Included in [Session 6E]: Anti-racism

Author Keywords
First Nations perspectives, Local Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, Open educational practices