Questioning Oers Contribution to a More Quality, Inclusive and Just Education through the Lens of the Social Justice Perspective

As acknowledged by UNESCO (2023) and by the Cape Town Declaration, education is an inalienable human right. Being the place where knowledge is built and transmitted, where we connect to the others and to the world, education is the heart of every possible transformation, at both individual and social level (Bertoni Jovine 1964; Bell Hooks 1994, Pennacchiotti, Tudisca, Valente 2022; Carol V. 2018, Roberts-Crews 2024). Open Educational Resources (OER), routed on openness, may have a great potential in supporting an accessible, inclusive and quality education. But, is it accessibility a sufficient requirement to guarantee the capability of OER to contribute in making education more inclusive and of quality? One of the most powerful arguments in that sense, is that OER, garnering cost saving, can improve access to quality educational materials for students and educators in comparably poorer contexts. However, as evidenced by Hodgkinson-Williams (2018), several studies, mainly from the Global South (Disha, Vollman 2023; de Rosa, Robinson 2017, Craft, Brown 2024) suggest that these costs savings are not necessarily accompanied by real changes/improvements if they are not supported by a critical approach and actions aimed at overcoming status subordinations, changing power dynamics and acknowledging everyone the right to be heard and accorded a voice. Based on these reflections, we question the potentiality of OER to a more quality, inclusive, accessible education, exploring, as a case study, the European Project Open Learning for All (OLA), through the lens of Nancy Fraser and Iris Young's Social Justice perspectives. By analyzing OLA OER through a mixed method approach and content analysis technique, a set of indicators is developed to measure to what extent an OER meets the 3 dimensions of social justice (redistribution, recognition, representation) and to identify at what level(“neutral”, “affirmative” or “transformative”).