Learning as Participation: Open Practices and the Production of Identities

For some time, the world has been looking hopefully toward digitally enabled openness to bring about positive transformation and development (Smith, Elder, and Emdon 2011). In this chapter, we unpack this hope and examine the linkages between open initiatives and development. The prefix open conjures up the idea of making digital platforms, knowledge, and knowledge development processes more accessible, including to a hitherto excluded group of people. However, the links between openness, participation, and development are far from automatic, and understanding people’s participation in open processes continues to elude researchers and practitioners. Thus, what we need to focus on is not only whether participation occurred but who participated and who was excluded (whether by exercising their choice or systematically). In sum, there is a need to understand how existing micro and institutional power structures shape the dynamics of participation. Moreover, open development cannot afford to focus merely on the outcomes of an intervention and label them a success or failure relative to the goals of that intervention. We need to focus equally on the processes and practices by which those outcomes were reached. This chapter develops a framework for a better understanding and analysis of open development processes that link people’s participation in open practices to open development outcomes through changes in their identities. Understanding people’s participation in open processes involves analyzing “what kind of participation and to what avail, on whose terms it takes place, and how it recasts power” (Singh and Gurumurthy 2013, 176). Harvey (2013, 284) likewise pointed out in his study of AfricaAdapt that participation in a collaborative learning network is contingent on “the 4 Learning as Participation: Open Practices and the Production of Identities