K-12 Educators’ Usage of Open Educational Resources: From the social justice perspective

• In Event: The SCOPE of Open Education Research

Abstract

Objectives
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free online resources with open licenses that allow for retention, reuse, revision, remixing, and redistribution to cater to personalized instructional needs without cost (Hilton, 2016, 2020). OER may promote social justice imperatives in education, but it remains uncertain whether OER benefit their primary beneficiaries. This exploratory research thus aimed to interrogate how the second-level digital divide shapes K-12 teachers’ effective use of OER from a social justice perspective.

Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework guiding this research is the digital divide, which describes the uneven distribution of access to and use of technology (Gunkel, 2003). The first-level digital divide refers to the disparity between groups in their access to digital technologies (Dolan, 2016; Scheerder et al., 2017), while the second-level divide pertains to disparities in their ability to effectively use these technologies (Reinhart et al., 2011; Wood & Howley, 2012). In K-12 education, the second-level divide leads to gaps in technology use based on factors like gender, race, socioeconomic status, and school geography, affecting students' engagement with educational opportunities.

Methods
The research involved a dataset from the OER Research Hub in the Open University (Farrow et al., 2015), where 675 K-12 educators from 72 countries participated in an OER user survey. The study examined how national demographic variables, including cultural dimensions and internet access rates, predicted the gaps in teachers' effective use of OER. Stepwise logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify significant variables. To select the best-fitting model, we used the Akaike information criterion (AIC) index (Akaike, 1974).

Results
The results revealed that individualism, gender development index (GDI), and uncertainty avoidance positively related to teachers' effective use of OER, while power distance, masculinity, indulgence vs. restraint, and internet user rate showed negative relationships. Gender equality, as measured by GDI, significantly influenced teachers' effective use of OER in that an individual from a high GDI country is more likely to adapt OER with the odds of 2.53 times higher when GDI increases one unit.
Furthermore, the study examined first-order and second-order barriers faced by teachers in using OER. It found that individualism, human development index (HDI), and internet access rate predicted first-order barriers, with HDI having a strong impact on the probability of facing these barriers. For second-order barriers, individualism and HDI were positively correlated, while masculinity and internet user rate showed negative correlations.

Significance
In conclusion, this research provides insights into how the digital divide affects K-12 teachers' use of OER from a social justice perspective. The findings highlight the importance of considering national demographic variables related to social justice in addressing barriers to effective OER utilization and promoting equitable access to education for all students.

Authors

• Hengtao Tang, University of South Carolina

• Yu Bao, James Madison University