1. ROERD IT for Change (www.ITforChange.net) Bangalore, IndiaCape Town December 2013

2. Participatory action research Participatory action research (PAR) seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and reflectively. This long-standing tradition emphasizes principles of collective inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and social history. Within a PAR process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers" (Reason and Bradbury, 2008) 3. Participatory Action Research Whether and how, a bottom-up approach, where participants ('embedded' within a 'community of learning') collaboratively create contextual resources, can promote an effective OER model 4. Context Crisis in Teacher Education - Number and Quality OER as a method North Centric Quality of OER & Adoption of OER (also further marginalise the South) Proposed research Educational & Socio-cultural aspects Location Subject Teacher Forum Programme, Karnataka state of India (Teachers from around 1500 high schools, working with around 40 TE institutions) 5. Pedagogy and content Elliot W. Eisner - Like the systole and diastole of the beating heart, curriculum and teaching are the most fundamental aspects. ...No curriculum teaches itself, it always must be mediated Israel Scheffler - The transmission model of education coupled with the drive for increased efficiency tends to foster the view of the teacher as a minor technician within an industrial process. Elliot G. Mishler - Meaning in Context: Is There Any Other Kind? Harvard Educational Review Issue Prof Krishna Kumar Text book culture 6. Research objectives To study how collaborative and active OER adaptationcuration-creation processes can be embedded within a community of practitioners To understand how such a OER model can contribute to pedagogical processes To explore how such a model can locally produce OERs that can diversify and enrich the global OER movement. 7. Research Questions How would participatory processes supporting a community of learners in active adaptation-creation of OER encourage wider OER adoption? What individual, institutional and systemic capacities affect such OER processes? How can such a community of professionals work in a formal government / public system that may be compartmentalised and hierarchical? 8. Methodology Research will work with a sample of 50 teachers and 10 teacher-educators across 5 diverse socio-cultural regions in Karnataka, across a period of two years in a participatory action research mode Selection of 60 on a stratified sampling basis, considering age/experience, gender, {classes and subjects taught}, comfort with ICTs 9. Methodology The core group would engage in iterative cycles of planning, action, observation, reflection, specifying learning and further problematisation, using a variety of tools Workshops, focused group discussions, structured interviews and {surveys}, mailing list analyses, content analyses of resources (created and adapted by the teachers and teacher-educators). 10. Activity plan Initial planning and development of a shared framework workshops to set-up structures and processes, a webbased platform Facilitating the action research, including resource access-creation-curation-adoption Periodic workshops, interviews, FGDs of teachers, teacher educators and administrators Ongoing documentation Periodic reviews and interactions with the ROERD Possible national workshop for review and for connecting to policy makers (combined with partners) Study closure 11. Outcomes/Outputs Short research papers Final Research Report Connections with policy makers in state and federal levels (National Workshop for sharing and connecting) Model of OER participatory, contextual, sustainable Local OERs 12. Collaborations Karnataka Education DSERT (Apex body for curriculum development and teacher education)NCERT and RIE (National bodies for same)ROERD ColumbiaTeacher education projectsSystemic / Policy advocacy projects 13. Thank You Guru@ITforChange.net