Open-source software is widely praised for its transparency, adaptability, and freedom. In educational technology, however, this openness often stops at the level of code and licensing, while the pedagogical assumptions and implicit theories of learning embedded in digital tools remain opaque. This talk argues that truly open educational technology must extend the principle of openness to pedagogy itself. Every platform—whether a learning management system or an AI tutor—encodes a particular conception of learning, shaping what teachers and learners can do, often without making these assumptions visible or debatable. Drawing on the distinction between the grammar of schooling (the institutional routines and constraints that structure formal education) and the grammar of learning (the evolutionary and socio-cultural dynamics of how humans learn), the talk shows how even open-source projects risk reproducing outdated models of schooling if their pedagogical underpinnings remain implicit. Advocating for “open pedagogy for open EdTech,” it proposes aligning code transparency with pedagogical transparency by co-creating tools with educators, embedding multiple theoretical and didactical options, and enabling communities to adapt technologies to diverse learning contexts. Such an approach would move open-source EdTech beyond technical freedom and toward supporting learning sovereignty—empowering learners and educators to shape technologies in accordance with how learning actually works.

By Robert Reuter