Open learning is an innovative movement in education that emerged in the 1970s and evolved into fields of practice and study.
"[7] Case studies[7][8] illustrate open learning as an innovation both within and across academic disciplines, professions, social sectors and national boundaries, and in business and industry, higher education institutions, collaborative initiatives between institutions, and schooling for young learners.
Open learning as a teaching method is founded on the work of Célestin Freinet in France and Maria Montessori in Italy, among others.
A prominent example is the language experience approach to teaching initial literacy (cf.
More recent work on open learning has been conducted by the German pedagogues Hans Brügelmann (1975; 1999), Falko Peschel (2002), Jörg Ramseger (1977) and Wulf Wallrabenstein (1991).