Open Textbooks and Social Justice: Open Educational Practices to Address Economic, Cultural and Political Injustice at the University of Cape Town

Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle

Open Textbooks and Social Justice: Open Educational Practices to Address Economic, Cultural and Political Injustice at the University of Cape Town

Journal Article

2020-05

Journal Title

Journal of Interactive Media in Education

Link to Journal

https://jime.open.ac.uk/

Department

CILT

Faculty

Centre for Higher Education Development

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract

This paper provides evidence from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town (UCT), on the potential of open textbooks to address social injustice in South African higher education and the practices utilised by UCT staff to address these challenges. The paper uses Nancy Fraser’s (2005) trivalent lens to examine inequality, specifically as relates to the following dimensions: economic (maldistribution of resources); cultural (misrecognition of culture and identities); and political (misrepresentation or exclusion of voice). The findings demonstrate that open textbooks have the potential to disrupt histories of exclusion in South African higher education institutions by addressing issues of cost and marginalisation through the creation of affordable, contextually-relevant learning resources. In addition to this, they provide affordances which enable lecturers to change the way they teach, include student voices and create innovative pedagogical strategies.