Internationally, the potentials of Open Education for diverse learning groups are being explored. Herein, the use of Open Educational Resources (OER), materials in any medium published under an open license allowing for free access and adaptation, is being promoted globally. Due to their accessibility and adaptivity, OER are being associated with inclusion and the aim to value the diversity of learners. Thus, OER represent a central aspect in the process of valueing diversity. This process takes place simultaneously on a variety of repositories, digital spaces dedicated to the distribution of materials and participation in the OER discourse. It is likely that a wide variety of understandings of diversity and inclusion will develop within these spaces. Hence, educational research must be responsive to these communities, their spaces and practices. The UNESCO promotes the use of OER in order to contribute to social inclusion, and quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory (UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration; Ljubljana OER Action Plan 2017). The postulate of inclusion sensitivity on a global scale will encounter divergent understandings of inclusion both nationally and, even more so, internationally. This complexity is multiplied in the context of digitality, in which new forms of inclusion sensitivity are explored and recognition of diversity is postulated, while at the same time new challenges in terms of barriers and exclusion are raised. At the same time, a large number of actors are involved in OER and thus explicitly or implicitly in the discussion about diversity and inclusion in educational settings. This complexity raises the question of how well-founded the affiliation between Open Education, OER and inclusion really is. Up until recently (i.e. Bozkurt, Koseoglu & Singh 2019), the concept of openness in education as a whole lacked a philosophical and theoretical basis (Deimann & Farrow 2013), which was subsequently criticised as “weakly theorised" (Knox 2013). Postulating openness and thus OER as conducive to participation and inclusion could even obscure social inequalities (Otto & Kerres 2022) and even have an exclusionary effect (Funes & Mackness 2018). Given these tensions, it is important to gain clarity about how inclusion is commonly understood in the context of OER. In order to assess this, OER repositories as the digital infrastructure rendering learning content accessible (McGreal 2011) are being analysed. Since these repositories should not merely be considered a facilitator for materials but a support for educators and learners embracing practices corresponding to the ideals of OER (Atenas & Havemann 2014), they serve as an access point to assessing understandings of inclusion in the OER communities and movement.

The paper poses the research question: Which understandings of inclusion can be traced on OER repositories? This overarching question is answered focusing on following questions in order to narrow down the multitude of approaches to digital portals and platforms: 1) Self-conception: How is inclusion and inclusion sensitivity referred to on the repository? 2) configurations: In what ways do the structure and functions of the repository explicitly address the facets of OER that are postulated as inclusion-sensitive, e.g. adaptivity? 3) Quality criteria: To what extent do quality rubrics for OER on the platforms refer to inclusion sensitivity? These questions are being answered from an international-comparative perspective (e.g. Phillips & Schweisfurth 2007). By bringing four European nations’ perspectives into view (Germany, Czech Republic, Sweden, Luxembourg), whereby e.g. German-language offers can also be applied in Austria and Switzerland, a broad trans-European perspective can be applied.  Simultaneously, international comparisons allow for identifying local context-specific frameworks relevant for varying approaches to diversity.

The posed questions are being investigated on the basis of 20 OER repositories from four European countries (Germany, Czech Republic, Sweden, Luxembourg). The selection criteria amounted to the thematic scope (primary education), target groups, access, language and providers. Following the approach of theoretical sampling, it was aimed to differentiate the sample for each focused country and, thus, open up the topic area as broadly as possible not only in terms of transnational perspectives but involved groups (volunteers, enterprises, associations). Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring 2010) offers a structured, qualitative approach to data which allows for bigger amounts of data to be analyzed effectively by simultaneously being responsive to latent significations (Mayring & Fenzel 2019). Evidently, digital platforms can be analysed in a multitude of ways, so that deductive categories grounded in the existing theory are needed to guide the way repositories will be looked at in detail. Siegel and Heiland (2019) have presented an analysis of OER platforms that focuses on the multi-layered provider landscape of platforms. They have reviewed OER repositories in terms of their offers, target groups and goals, contributors and forms of use. At the same time, it is important to remain sensitive to inductive categories that can be extracted from the data material. For this reason, an abductive procedure is chosen, which represents a middle ground between deduction and induction. Due to different definitions of abduction, one particular approach (Kelle & Kluge 2010) was chosen which is able to create theoretically informed but empirically founded new hypotheses. In order to compile a body of data, descriptions of goals and aims of the repository, as well as, if existent, statements or rubrics regarding quality criteria have been substracted. This material is available in text form. In order to process the overall configurations and functions of the repository, relevant sub-pages (e.g. addressing adaptations or modes of participating in the community), of the website have been converted into a digitally printed file. This allowed for a reliable comparability of a momentary record of the website and prevented the accumulation of screenshots. The results were first broken down for the individual countries in order to then be contextualised in an international comparison (Schriewer 2009, Waterkamp 2006, Hilker 1962) and to evaluate on how OER communities deal with inclusion issues at a transnational level.

The international-comparative perspective was able to show that the repositories as digital landmarks of the OER movement do not sufficiently reflect questions of diversity and inclusion. There is a discrepancy between the ideals and claims of the OER movements and deeper understandings of diversity. Additionally, educational research has a blank spot for OER at the level of its communities and platforms, which is addressed in this paper. The examined repositories do reference inclusion to varying degrees. This referencing however is met with constraints to far-reaching inclusion-sensitive practices or support thereof. For example, repositories which explicitly hightlight the potential of OER for inclusion-sensitive teaching and learning contexts simultaneously exhibit limited participation possibilities or lack transparency regarding quality criteria. The postulated interrelation between inclusion and OER is not characterised by the existence of different understandings. Much rather, a de-centering of the discourse on inclusion can be identified. This implies a misrecognition of the dimensionality of inclusion. In this context, the question arises as to how diversity and inclusion can achieve deeper recognition in the field of OER and corresponding Open Educational Practices. In the context of OER, a wide variety of actors and interest groups encounter each other. The transnationality of this topic further increases the complexity within the field. This level of complexity prevalent in the field of OER hinders its further development as a driver for social change on an international scale. As an outlook it will be asked if the Delphi method (Brady 2015) enabling a structured, anonymous and multilayered (as well as multilingual) communication process between different communities provides the needed framework to help education research to contribute to a more substantial discussion of inclusion-sensitivity of OER and Open Eduation.

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