In India, OER was welcomed as a legitimate way to distribute educational resources by the state authorities though use and awareness is not widespread. So localisation through translation and reference to place and culture can lead to greater learner engagement.
When a team of localisers for subject areas such as Language and Literacy, Maths, Science and English were brought together to translate OER material.
Four forms of practitioner agency identified:
- Those who wanted the localisation process to involve both teachers and students "whenever I felt there was something missing from the OER, I used to take help from a child from the class itself" Pilot use of the OER in the classroom allowing further refinement.
- Collective and individual action-becoming familiar with the OER material and mapping against the State textbooks to move forward.
- New teaching practices-new ways of viewing the professional development process, teachers through encountering the OER are transferring their new knowledge to colleagues.
- Collective movement in practice-workshop mode brought new benefits and ways of looking at the material, it was better to brainstorm in this environment than work on localising the material as individuals. For example, translators worked individually on translating paragraphs then discussed their output together, giving feedback to each other.
Wolfenden, F & Adinolfi, A (2019) 'An exploration of agency in the localisation of open educational resources for teacher development', Learning, Media and Technology vol. 44, no. 3, pp 327-344 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1628046