As highlighted by UNESCO - Futures of Education initiative, Cape Town Declaration and enhanced by European Commission, education is an inalienable human right, the place where societies can imagine and built their futures in view of more inclusive, peaceful and sustainable societies. Being the place where knowledge is built and transmitted in view of new more advanced scientific or social outcomes, where we connect to the others and to the world and where we are exposed to new possibilities, education is the heart of every possible transformation at both individual and collective/social level. As shown by case studies centered on educational programs in situations of marginalization, it should be a site of possibility and advocacy  that can transform circumstances  of disadvantage, overcome barriers to learning and at the same time it is the place where individuals have the opportunity to develop their talents and acquire the tools to live a dignified and meaningful life.

In this sense some flagship concepts are worth remembering referring to quality education:

1. education it’s a public and common good grounded in rights and corresponding obligations, which should be accessible to all (UNESCO 2023);
2. while empowering learners as rights-holders, it should ensure “non-discrimination, inclusion and equity, irrespective of race, colour, descent, gender, age, language, religion, political opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, economic or social condition of birth, or disability and any other grounds” (UNESCO 2023) .
3. it should help students facing to the complexity and uncertainty of the reality and to diversity  In this process teachers have the crucial role to push students to meet complex questions and things they would never have look for or things didn’t know they could try.

However, as highlighted by the PISA results, access to quality education is still far from being guaranteed to all, especially the most vulnerable, and significant differences remain between and within education systems.

In this context Open Educational Resources (OER), routed on the openness principles and blurring the traditional distinction between the “consumer” and the “producer” (OECD 2007) introducing the concept of the teacher as a user- producer, may have a great potential in supporting accessibility and inclusiveness of education systems and enhancing 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?

As evidenced by Hodgkinson-Williams some of the most powerful arguments to demonstrate the contribution of OER to inclusive and quality education is that OER, garnering cost saving, can improve access to quality educational materials for students and educators in comparably poorer contexts. However, other studies (mainly from the Global South) suggest that these costs savings are not necessarily accompanied by real changes/improvements in students’ learning outcomes and openness not necessarily translate into achieving more equity  and justice. 

Based on these reflections, starting from the Nancy Fraser’s and Iris Young’s perspective on Social Justice, already adapted by Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter (2015) to the educational context and hybridizing it with inputs from UNESCO and European Commission Recommendations and from the ongoing scientific debate,  we propose a  set of indicators to critically analyze the potentiality of OER to give a substantial contribution to a more quality, inclusive and accessible education. 

With Fraser’s social justice framework and its adaptation to the educational context made by Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter in mind, we developed a set of indicators to measure to what extent and at what level (“neutral”, “ameliorative” or “transformative”) an OER meets the 3 dimensions of social justice (redistribution, recognition, representation) and to identify and perceive their potential contribution in that sense. The main method adopted is the conceptual research and specifically a critical analysis (Epstein, 2001) to detect the presence or absence of ameliorative and/or transformative potential in OERs. We designed, in a participatory way involving researchers and teachers, a tentative set of indicators for each of the 3 dimensions identified by Fraser, and we tested them exploring, with a content analysis technique, as a case study, the OERs created by teachers of secondary schools from 4 European countries within European Project Open Learning for All (OLA). A sample of 20 OER from the 82 scenarios created was evaluated according to their economic, cultural and political dimensions.

This study proposes a set of indicators to measure OER capability to contribute in enhancing the inclusiveness and accessibility for all to quality education. We have proposed the use of the multidimensional concept of social justice enhanced by Fraser and adapted to the educational context, to critically engage with under what conditions OER might contribute in promoting quality and inclusiveness, taking into account the needs of the most fragile students and constrains and barriers experienced in disadvantaged contexts. A set of factors with significant impact was identified, confirming that quality education is a multidimensional concept. The empirical application illustrates how these tools can be useful to help teachers and educators in designing quality OERs as they will have the basics they require to focus their actions on improving the dimensions and variables that most improve inclusiveness and accessibility of educational resources. At the same time, the sets of indicators proposed can be adopted to measure to what extent and at what level (“neutral”, “ameliorative” or “transformative”) an OER meets the 3 dimensions of social justice (redistribution, recognition, representation) and to identify and perceive their potential contribution in that sense. Finally these indicators can become the basis for future research: the next phase of our research process involves conducting empirical tests on a larger and more varied sample of OERs in order to calibrate a quality index for OER.

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