Open Pedagogy as an Approach to Introducing Doctoral Students to Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy Concepts

In this article, we argue that mutual adaptation can also be applied to understand graduate student implementation of curriculum. We position McLaughlin’s framework as an important tool for understanding students’ responses to the written and taught curriculum. Open pedagogy experiments can strategically introduce doctoral students to open practices, shaping their adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy in their future teaching endeavors. This article describes the cocreation of a doctoral-level course assignment for a midwestern university’s School of Education. Utilizing the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Framework for Information Literacy, the course prepared doctoral students to curate resources for an OER research guide about commonly used research methodologies. Two librarians and one professor provided active mentoring on OER and infused information literacy concepts in the doctoral course through active learning tools, including video chalk talks, research consultations, and a card sort activity. Using McLaughlin’s theory of mutual adaptation, we analyzed student online discussions and course evaluations for evidence of mutual adaptation, resistance, and cooptation. While students generally exhibited mutual adaptation (emerging, mastery, and investment), findings center on when and how students co-opted or resisted the curriculum related to open access and authorship. The article concludes with implications for theory and practice and recommendations for practitioners interested in designing effective open pedagogy experiments and furthering doctoral students’ adoption of open practices.