The increasing access to and fast development of Information and Communication Technology has affected almost all aspects of our lives, including its ubiquitous use in education. In particular, teachers use, revise, develop and share (digital) educational resources. The wide accessibility of these resources has questioned ownership and user rights, thus coining the concept of open educational resources (OER). Such aspects of OER are distinguished through use of licensing, such as according to Creative Commons licenses. Moreover, UNESCO (2019, p.5) define OER as: “learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others”.

However, there is little research on how teachers evaluate the quality of OER, their competence in modifying and developing OER, and what affordances and challenges they meet in using OER for inclusive education in contemporary schools, especially in Europe. To contribute to the practices related to identifying, using, modifying and developing high quality OER, we conducted a mixed method study consisting of a survey and an interview study across five countries, including Austria, Estland, Italy, Norway and Spain. This study is part of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies project EQui-T (European quality development system for inclusive education and teacher training).

This contribution aims to present the results regarding the underlying reasoning, mechanisms and practices related to teachers’ use of OER by addressing the following research questions:
1. How do K-12 teachers understand the concept of OER?
2. What processes and mechanisms are involved in K-12 teachers’ selection and use of OER (purpose, needs, procedures, etc.)
3. How do K-12 teachers evaluate the quality of OER?
4. What are K-12 teachers’ perceived challenges and affordances related to OER?

N = 120 teachers (male=94, female=26; teaching experience: M=9.6 years, SD=10.18) participated in an online survey between November 2024 and March 2025. To gain deeper insights, a semi-structured interview guide was developed, piloted and conducted in all five countries (6-10 teachers per country). The interviews have been analysed using thematic analysis.

The quantitative results show that 51.7 % (n=62) teachers had heard about the concept of OER earlier. 44.2 % (n=53) use them in their class and rate them as beneficial for students with and without special educational needs. Even though the license of OER as quality criteria was rated as high (n=42, M=4.24, SD=.79) it is apparent both in the questionnaire and the interviews that the teachers lack knowledge on the different licenses and confidence dealing with them (M=3.17, SD=1.23). Furthermore, teachers show reluctancy and mention discomfort when it comes to sharing OER and/or did not apply a license to material shared so far (10 out of 21 teachers). Moreover, different strategies and mechanisms are involved in the teachers’ selection and use of OER for inclusive education – showcasing certain patterns that could be used for designing professional development within this field. This goes along with the need for support regarding information on OER in general (n=30, 65.2 %) teachers mentioned in the questionnaire. The results and their implications for research, policy and practice will be discussed.

Keywords: Education, Teachers, Open educational resources, Professional development, Technology.