Open Educational Resources (OER) and Repositories have had a relevant role in overcoming the educational crisis during COVID-19 . Findings of a previous study (Rodés et al, 2017) allowed us to identify various trends that seem to be deepened in the context of the COVID 19 emergency, accelerating the adoption of OER by K12 teachers in Uruguay (Szczepaniak et al, 2020).

To investigate the agency of teachers of public primary schools in their practices of creating, reuse and sharing resources, a study, made possible by a GO-GN Research Fellowship, is being carried out, focusing on how these processes were developed within the situation of extreme vulnerability of the educational communities.

A qualitative methodology was implemented, based on a Latin American critical conceptual model of the adoption of OER (Rodés, 2019). Individual interviews with school principals and group interviews with teachers, from 3 schools, allowed us to build the case studies: a school in Montevideo (capital of Uruguay), a school in the metropolitan area, and a school in a province located in the north of the country. This diversity made it possible to provide variability and comparability to the study.

Preliminary findings highlight the evidence of new practices of use of OER currently available in national repositories and educational platforms. Reusing practices involve few adaptations, apart from “inspiration” based reuse. Sharing practices are observed between peers and on a “human scale” in the educational institution or between nearby schools. There is a general lack of knowledge of the difference between OER and other educational resources available on the Internet. Creation Resources creation practices is highlighted, in general their creation involved teaching teams. The leadership role of the school principal is significant, as is the pre-existence of a professional community in which in-service training is shared. Also significant is the role of teachers already trained in ed-tech, to promote and lead the work of other teachers.

Those preliminary findings show the relevance of teachers’ agency as curriculum changers, and the leadership of those responsible for an educational community. The need to drastically change teaching practices towards the virtual modality generated by the health emergency operated as a driver, making the adoption of OER a necessity. A high instability of these transformations is observed in the evolution towards the return to face-to-face education. These instabilities would require the establishment of mechanisms to promote and prioritize the creation, adaptation and sharing of OER, in order to give visibility to the value of these practices and to give sustainability to the learning generated by the Pandemic.

Participants will be able to participate before the session (from the blogpost on the GO-GN website), during the session (through questions, comments and suggestions), and after the session (through discussion in social networks).