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From several conversations ...

"Openness" is a method in emergent pedagogy, not an objective.  Recognizing this offers a bridge between the virtues (and problems) of "openness" and those of "structure."  The objective is to help students (and others) become better shapers of their own lives (and contributors to others doing the same thing).  To achieve this, students (and others) need environments that offer and encourage new possibilties (openness) but they also need structures in order to be able to recognize/create/make productive use of new possibilities.  The balance of openness and structure should be presumed to be different in different contexts, for different people, and for the same people at different times.  People also need the ability to see difference not as a threat but as the grist from which new possibilities arise.  In this context, what is wanted is to help people identity the presumptions they make, not necessarily to "challenge" them but to be aware they are there, and could be changed and/or otherwise used to create new possibilities.  And to help people see others in the same light, to see different presumptions as an opportunity for not antagonism or compromise but rather creative hybridization.