Sorting hat or choosing stone?

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This is a response to a prompt relating to a post in the course discussion forum.

Is open education another self-selecting process similar to the depictions of the sorting hat in Harry Potter or the choosing stone in the Divergent novel?

What a great question! This one has been tumbling around in my brain and is still causing some conflicting thoughts. What complicates a response to this question is the shifting, evolving process of defining what open means, and becoming an open educator. This is, I think also, at a granular level, what the sorting hat (Harry Potter) and choosing stone (Divergent Series) are all about. With the sorting hat, presumably, the hat detects what is inside your mind, perceives what you will become, and dictates the environment in which you will become your best self. With the choosing stone in the Divergent novel, the stone is not the object of revelation, but the blood from the cut in your hand, which indicates a strong tie binding you to your decision at the moment of choice. It’s not the object that reveals the faction in which you’ll spend your life, but the internal quest for truth about yourself and who you will become – being true to your inner nature.

As a reflection of these artistic depictions, neither can fully describe what it means to become an open educator. There is no moment in time when someone is deemed to be open or be identified as open as we see with a sorting hat scenario. While there may be an inner, cognitive predilection to being open, this is not revealed in a grand ceremonial way. It is slowly revealed in the individual, iterative, incremental decisions to share your work of teaching and learning with others in a variety of Web 2.0 and social media spaces. Unlike the stone in the Divergent novel, there is no moment of selection, or commitment in blood. Becoming an open educator happens over time, in relationship with others, in conversations in any number of ways, across global contexts. Becoming an open educator happens with people who may shape your ‘faction’ but who are also divergent thinkers, not bound by the rules that contain and limit behaviours and actions.

Becoming an open educator is not without constraints or barriers. While there may be supports available to those who make the choice to shift their teaching practice into the open, the models created by others and shared as open opportunities for students, are what ultimately breaks down perceptions and boundaries. Personal interests in open education are often tempered by professional decisions, not the least being the needs and expectations of the students we teach. Getting free or open access course materials may be the entry point, but collaborating with experts in the field is the ultimate open opportunity.

Awareness of what it means to be an open educator sometimes occurs without even realizing it’s happening, or fully knowing what it is you’re moving towards. I’ve often heard others saying “Oh, that’s part of open education? I guess I was doing it all along!” But even with a sorting hat or choosing stone, the selection is made without fully realizing what it is that is being chosen. Harry Potter didn’t fully realize what it meant to be Gryffendor, just that he didn’t want to be Slytherin. The main character, Tris, in Divergent didn’t have a clear idea what it meant to be a member of the ‘dauntless’ faction, she just knew she didn’t fit into the conception of any of the other options. This could have been moving away from what she wasn’t rather than becoming what she thought she was. Just as it was for me, as I moved away from the constraints of closed systems of sharing information and educational opportunities, and shifted my teaching toward an open landscape for learning.

Unlike the sorting hat or choosing stone scenarios, these isn’t a decision to be made at a critical juncture in the narrative. There are conflicting and complex concepts that come together to define open educational practices (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018; Hegarty, 2015; Paskevicius, 2017; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2017; Noddings & Enright, 1983; Wiley & Hilton, 2018). There are moments of open that blend and evolve over time. There are decisions, such as making a course fully open by publishing it on an open web site, that don’t happen in isolation or with great ceremony. My exploration of what open education is or isn’t, within my current teaching contexts, will take a bit longer to deconstruct and reconstruct, but that’s part of what I will be doing in this PhD work.

Stay tuned… there’s a sequel coming!

References

Cronin, C. & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in Open Educational Practices. Open Praxis, 10(2): 127-143.

Divergent Series. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, November 23 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divergent_Series

Harry Potter. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, November 23 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of open pedagogy: A model for using open educational resources. Educational Technology. Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Ed_Tech_Hegarty_2015_article_attributes_of_open_pedagogy.pdf 

Nascimbeni, F. & Burgos, D. (2016). In search for the open educator: Proposal of a definition and a framework to increase openness adoption among university educators. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(6), p. 1-17.

Noddings, N. & Enright, D. S. (1983). The promise of open education. Theory into Practice. 22(3), 182-189.

Paskevicius, M. (2017). Conceptualizing open educational practices through the lens of constructive alignment. Open Praxis, 9(2), 125-140.

Wiley, D., & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4).