ID: 33734
Across open education initiatives, a persistent challenge remains: while access to Open Educational Resources (OER) has expanded, there is still a lack of contextualized, culturally relevant content, particularly in basic education contexts. At the same time, teachers are often positioned as users or adapters of resources rather than as authors of open knowledge.
The Creatón STEM+ methodological model addresses this gap by providing a structured Open Educational Practice that enables teachers to collaboratively design, prototype and publish OER grounded in local realities. Developed and implemented across Colombia, Chile and Uruguay, the model responds to the need for cross-regional approaches to open education that are rooted in the Global South and in school-level educational contexts. Its implementation across these contexts enabled the model to be tested and analysed in diverse educational settings.
The model integrates three key components:
(1) a preparatory phase focused on principles of open education, inclusion, the STEM+ educational approach and the ethical use of technologies in OER creation;
(2) an intensive co-creation Creatón based on a pedagogically adapted Design Thinking process; and
(3) a post-Creatón phase that supports validation, refinement and publication of OER. Central to the model is the positioning of teachers as creators of situated pedagogical knowledge, working collaboratively on real socio-educational challenges from their territories.
Findings from the analysis of the implementation process reveal key dimensions that shape the functioning of the model. The analysis highlights the centrality of collaborative work, pedagogical mediation and situated reflection in co-creation processes, as well as the need to structure learning beyond the intensive co-creation phase. At the same time, results show shifts in teachers’ understanding of STEM+, inclusion and open education, together with a significant increase in the perceived legitimacy of OER as a professional practice. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Creatón STEM+ methodological model not only has the potential to support the production of contextually relevant OER, but also contributes to repositioning open educational practices within teachers’ professional identity and everyday pedagogical work.
This presentation will examine the methodological architecture of the Creatón STEM+ model, its core pedagogical principles and its implementation across diverse educational contexts in Latin America. It will also discuss how cross-regional collaboration can strengthen the development of contextualized open content and contribute to more equitable and sustainable open education ecosystems.
The Creatón model offers a transferable framework for moving open education beyond access toward collective, teacher-led knowledge production in basic education, particularly in contexts where contextual relevance, inclusion and teacher agency are critical.
