A final need pertains to the curricular materials available to teachers and students alike \u2013 a challenge that has been addressed through efforts to develop open educational resources<\/em> (OER; Hewlett Foundation 2022). Each of these attempts to open educational research is in service of a different aim, but they share features, including a commitment to the sharing of resources and materials whenever possible to benefit the educational system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When considering efforts to open science education research, the emphasis on research-practice partnerships is evident \u2014 see Edelson et al., (2021) ,Farrell et al. (2022), Marshall et al. (2021), and Penuel (2017), for several examples. Furthermore, there have been efforts to engage in open science in science education (Kessler et al., 2021; Nosek et al., 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In considering the development of OER, several examples may be presented, with the OpenSciEd curriculum development project (see OpenSciEd, 2022a) as the most visible and noteworthy. An important feature of OpenSciEd is that it represents the development of whole units of curricular materials. These units are thoughtfully developed and are likely highly useful to many science educators, but surveys indicate that teachers turn to a wide range of curricular materials, including sources that provide one-off activities or lesson plans that teachers can use to augment their instruction (Polikoff & Dean, 2019; Tuma et al., 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n From this vantage, it appears that studies of OER available through a range of sources \u2014 teachers\u2019 blogs, social media, and even commercial platforms such as TeachersPayTeachers \u2014have not been paid very much attention, though they may be widely used by science educators. Thus, though efforts to open science education research are prominent, less research has considered the roles of OER in science education. but OER can be important. Smith and Casserly (2006) captured the values underlying these efforts across education: \u201cAt the heart of the open-educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that the world\u2019s knowledge is a public good\u201d (p. 10). Further, these authors highlighted how these efforts draw on positive features of technology, writing that \u201ctechnology in general and the World Wide Web, in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge\u201d (p. 10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n OER can be seen as a means of making greater knowledge accessible to teachers and learners. In this way, OER can be a \u2014 perhaps the<\/em> \u2014 primary way that efforts to open education are relevant to most science educators and science education researchers, especially those with an interest in the use of technology in the discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This topic and the aim of arguing in favor of the importance of OER for future research and development are the focus of this paper. In the next section, prior research on OER in education (widely) and in science education (specifically) is considered. Following this review is an empirical investigation into the OER available for science educators on one of the most widely used platforms for OER, OER Commons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n OER are \u201cteaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others\u201d (Hewlett Foundation, 2020, para. 4). These resources range from courses and books to tests and technologies. By being open, they are not only available to others to use, but also to reuse, redistribute (or share), revise (adapt or change the work), and remix (combining existing resources to create a new one; Hilton et al., 2010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n OER have been well-researched for nearly a decade and a half, especially at the postsecondary level. Research has found that students and instructors positively perceived OER relative to for-purchase textbooks (Hilton, 2016), though there is variation in effectiveness based on characteristics of both students and course modality (Clinton-Lisell, 2022). Further, research has documented how students typically achieve similar learning outcomes when using OER textbooks relative to students using commercial textbooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though less research has been conducted at the K-12 than at the postsecondary level (perhaps because the motivation for many investigations into OER is to enhance the affordability of postsecondary education for students by not requiring them to purchase pricey textbooks), some research has been conducted. One prominent study demonstrated that students using OER textbooks in high school science (earth science, chemistry, and physics) classes demonstrated greater achievement, as measured through standardized tests (Robinson et al., 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In sum, OER textbooks have generally been found to be appropriate replacements for traditional textbooks in terms of student and instructor (or teacher) perceptions of their effectiveness and in terms of student achievement when using them. A key benefit of OER is that they do not need to be purchased either by students or K-12 institutions, which can use the funding for textbooks for other purposes, such as laboratory and investigation-related materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there has been research into the effectiveness of OER textbooks, teachers regularly supplement what is in their textbooks with additional materials. Some research has investigated teachers\u2019 perceptions of the materials available through various platforms and marketplaces \u2014especially TeachersPayTeachers. For instance, Aguilar et al. (2022) examined the contents of practically all of the English\/language arts and mathematics materials (lesson and unit plans, printables\/worksheets, and assessments, among other types) on the commercial platform Teachers Pay Teachers using educational data mining methods. They found that the more than 500,000 resources were primarily for elementary teachers, and a relatively small percentage (40%) were aligned with the national Common Core State Standards<\/em> (National Governors Association, 2010)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Other studies using similar data mining methods have found that some of the most-downloaded resources on TeachersPayTeachers were \u201cready-to-go, fun materials,\u201d along with decorative items (e.g., bullet board ideas; Shelton et al., 2022). Though educators report that TeachersPayTeachers help them to address the limitations of the materials available to them (Carpenter & Shelton, 2022), their quality (at least for social studies resources) is questionable (Harris et al., 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Further, TeachersPayTeachers has been found to be unequal in terms of the rewards earned by the educators who list their materials on the platform: a remarkable 81% of sales are attributable to the top 1% of sellers (Koehler et al., 2020). In the context of the generally positive findings associated with OER, there has been more critical research into the prominent TeachersPayTeachers platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from textbooks and resources through TeachersPayTeachers, teachers access materials from a range of other sources, including trusted colleagues, professional development providers, and the websites of professional organizations, social media, and other platforms (Hodge et al., 2019; Polikoff, 2019; Rosenberg et al., 2020; Tuma et al., 2022). One platform that is the focus of this study is OER Commons. Though perhaps the most prominent for OER resources in a manner akin to how TeachersPayTeachers hosts resources for sale, this platform with strictly freely accessible resources has not been the focus of any prior research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There has been less research into open materials and OER in grades K-12 science classrooms \u2014 except for Robinson\u2019s (2014) study of the effectiveness of OER textbooks in terms of students\u2019 achievement. However, this does not mean that science education researchers and science educators do not value or use open materials and OER. There is a long history of science education researchers creating and sharing curricular materials. Consider the three journals for K-12 science teachers published by the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA; The Science Teacher, Science Scope<\/em>, and Science & Children<\/em>), each of which includes articles with research-based teaching strategies, lesson or unit ideas, and other resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other examples of the creation of materials include developing entire curricula, such as the IQWST project-based curricula (Krajcik et al., 2008). A possible criticism that could be levied against these efforts to share resources and curricula is that they are often partially or entirely unavailable except to those who pay for or already have access to them. To read articles in the NSTA journals, a science teacher must be an NSTA member; to use IQWST, an educator\u2019s district or school must purchase it. Though numerous exceptions exist, and doubtlessly most science education researchers and curriculum developers would like to share what they design and develop more widely, many research-based curricular materials are not freely accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge of the accessibility of high-quality materials has been recognized by researchers and practitioners alike. One response has been the OpenSciEd project, a project focused on developing and providing \u201chigh quality, NGSS-aligned science materials and outstanding professional learning support\u201d (OpenSciEd, 2022a, para. 2). Funded by a range of organizations, including the Hewlett Foundation (that has funded other OER-related projects), \u201call of the OpenSciEd units are being designed as Open Educational Resources\u201d (OpenSciEd, 2022b, para. 20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n OpenSciEd can be seen as a project following the mold of early OER advocates who wrote about the importance of freely sharing and making accessible knowledge (e.g., Smith & Casserly, 2006); OpenSciEd\u2019s website notes that the organization \u201cexists to combat inequities in education by providing high-quality science learning experiences for all students\u201d (OpenSciEd, 2022a, para 9.) Because of the number of units now available as OER and the careful design and development that undergirded their release (Edelson et al., 2021), OpenSciEd is the most prominent and important OER-related project in K-12 science education to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n OpenSciEd is an important OER for science teachers, but it is likely not the only source teachers turn to for curricular resources, especially as OpenSciEd has developed materials only for middle grades teachers. Among the many sources available to science teachers, OER Commons may be an important and central one: It contains resources for every content area and grade level and allows for organizations or units (e.g., state departments of education and nonprofit organizations) to share all their materials via a central, easy-to-use platform. Further, the kinds of materials available through OER Commons could serve as a complement to what OpenSciEd creates: where OpenSciEd creates entire units developed with a coherent (\u201cstoryline\u201d) approach (Edelson, 2020), educators may turn to resource marketplaces to fill gaps or supplement the curriculum or textbook they are provided (Carpenter & Shelton, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this reason, examining the science education contents of OER Commons may reveal a fuller picture in terms of the OER available for science teachers. Further, such an examination may reveal gaps in terms of research or curriculum design and development that could be addressed in future work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the study reported in this paper, the importance of OER for science educators was considered through an exploration of a prominent platform for the creation and sharing of such materials: OER Commons. OER Commons is \u201ca public digital library\u201d (OER Commons, para. 1) of OER that educators can freely access and, in most cases, use, modify, and share in modified form. Though the platform has many thousands of resources shared over more than a decade, no research has documented what <\/em>is accessible with respect to science education and how widely used<\/em> these materials might be. The research questions that guide this study, then, were as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n An examination of the availability and use of such resources can help to fill in the field\u2019s understanding of the ecosystem of materials available to science educators, which can contribute to research and further developments that enhance what is available to science educators to the ultimate benefit of science students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This study used a public Internet data miningapproach (Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2018) akin to that used in data mining studies of TeachersPayTeachers (Aguilar et al., 2022; Koehler et al., 2020; Shelton et al., 2021). Specifically, this study involved using the contents of the OER Commons website as a source of data that can be used to understand what is available to science educators on the platform. One benefit of using this methodological approach is the capability to access a large collection of posts in a manner that would be highly impractical to carry out using manual data collection processes. Another benefit of this approach is the nonresponsiveness to the study of the platform and its users: possible sources of bias that may accompany asking the creators of content on OER Commons to self-report on what they have created and shared are not present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While much information about resources on the platform is available, other information is not. Thus, a downside of this methodological approach is being limited to the contents of the site and not being able to inquire of creators or users of the platform about how they perceive and use resources. Despite this negative feature, this study was intended to present a first, exploratory view into which OER are available on this platform in a way that can provide ideas for further research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sample for this study consisted of all the science education resources available on the OER Commons website as of December 2022. First, all the resources on the OER Commons website were accessed using web scraping methods. Specifically, the URL for each resource was identified by iterating through each page of resources on a subject-by-subject basis, as this is the primary way that resources are presented on the website. This step and all subsequent analyses were carried out using the statistical software and programming language R (R Core Team, 2022). After each resource\u2019s URL was identified, the HTML for the resource was saved. Then, the information on each saved page was queried for specific information, including the resource\u2019s subject(s), title, material type, grade level, license type, endorsements, standard(s), and views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 1 is a screenshot of an example resource \u2013 one labeled as physical science. The title (\u201cAir – Is It Really There?\u201d) is near the top and at the center of the page. \u201cView Resource\u201d is a unique link to the resource. The five green stars indicate that one user has rated this resource as five out of five possible stars. The resource was viewed (as measured by the \u201cView Resource\u201d link being clicked) 310 times (and \u201csaved\u201d by users within their accounts 26 times, though this information was not used in the analysis). The level, material type, and license are noted beneath this information and the single endorsement, and two associated standards are provided on the right side of the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 1<\/strong> The result of identifying and recording information for each resource was the creation of a common-separated values file (spreadsheet) with information on 48,496 distinct projects available on OER Commons. To determine which projects were science-related, the labels for the subject or subjects for the resource were used. Specifically, any resource labeled with one or more of the following three subjects was a science education resource: physical science (including the earth sciences), life science, and applied science (which includes engineering, environmental science, and the health sciences); none of the other subjects were directly related to science. It was determined that 8,937 resources (18.4% of all resources on the website) were science related; 6,208 (69.5%) were life sciences resources; 1,950 (21.8%), applied science; and 1,940 (21.7%), physical science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To analyze data to answer Research Question 1 (about the characteristics of available resources), the following information was descriptively analyzed by presenting the counts and the proportions of resources by characteristic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To analyze the data for Research Question 2 (about how widely used the resources are), the mean number of Views \u2014 that is, the number of times a user accessed the resource via its unique link \u2014 were calculated for each specific group for the material type, grade level, and license type characteristic. The same mean number of views was calculated based on the number of endorsements and the presence of one or more aligned standards relative none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The findings for the two research questions are presented by characteristic (e.g., the material type). Across all projects, the mean number of views per resource was 52.0, but there was substantial variability between resources (SD <\/em>= 540.2, min.<\/em> = 0, max.<\/em> = 47,425).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plurality of resources were readings, 2,840 (constituting 31.8% of all science education resources; Table 1). Notably, on average, these resources received few views \u2014 an average of only 4.2 per resource, which indicates that most readings were likely being directly used from OER Commons by a few individuals. Readings were followed by a material type likely familiar and of interest to many science educators \u2014 ]activities and laboratory investigations \u2014 of which there were 1,694 (19.0% of all resources). These were viewed by far more users, on average, 60.6 per resource. Modules, lessons, and case studies were the next most common. Simulations, interactives, and textbooks, all commonly used by science educators for different purposes, were relatively uncommon on OER Commons.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLiterature Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Provenance, Availability, and Quality of OER<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Open Materials and OER in Science Education<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Purpose and the Present Study<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Method<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Methodology<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Data Source and Sample<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Example Physical Science Resource From OER Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/v23i3Science1Fig1.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nData Analysis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Findings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Material Type<\/h3>\n\n\n\n