It is an honour and a privilege to write the foreword for this book for three reasons. Firstly, I have great confidence in the intellectual integrity of the editors and their ability to attract and curate rigorous and finely-tuned contributions to the theory and practice of openness. Secondly, I believe that this book is important on its own terms because it offers a rich and necessary counternarrative to dominant marketized discourses in higher education where data surveillance is the new normal. Thirdly, the editors and the authors have consistently refused to offer simplistic or essentialist accounts of very complicated territory. In an era of techno determinism and easy promises in higher education, this commitment to nuance is exemplary; indeed, complex is as simple as it gets.
While the 47 authors from 20 countries approach the theories and practices of open(ing) education with multiple lenses and at different levels, there is coherence in the shared understanding that simple binaries are not useful, and specifically that simple oppositions of “open” and “closed” do not illuminate the intersections of policy, practice and discourse through which education is opening up. Thus, the book is held together by the metaphors of networks, ecologies and rhizomes which are threaded through the chapters.
While this book offers a sophisticated counter narrative, it is not a sci-fi utopian imaginary being provided; there is a form of principled pragmatism manifest in the cases studies and the macro and meso level analysis. At the micro level, it is in the real world of politics, social contestation, economic tension, discourse entanglement and profound contradictions that attempts at changing the foundations of education are being explored, experienced, trialled, researched and made visible. These case studies from different contexts framed by diverse disciplinary context, regulatory policies and cultural concerns insist on asking the hard questions of power and agency, history and structure. It is through the answering of these questions, that decisions can be made in order to negotiate new models of education holding on to the value of decades of experience, expertise, and understanding of the past. Yet at the same time, the imagination that shines through these narratives makes it possible to shape the future on the basis of new materialities and options.
It is because of these deep reflections, these robust accounts and this critical reflexivity that the possibility of change becomes tangible. At a moment in time in education where despair is never far-off, these rich and diverse offerings provide opportunities for optimism and reasons for engaged educators, academics and practitioners to persevere.