Re-mediating designs for equity: making commitments concrete
Information and Learning Sciences
ISSN: 2398-5348
Article publication date: 27 November 2020
Issue publication date: 15 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The design narrative details how the authors systematically and concretely adapted the design of afterschool club for children and pre-service teachers to respond to the increasingly explicit racism in US political discourse that fueled Trump’s election and coinciding forms of evading race.
Design/methodology/approach
The purpose of this paper is to present a design narrative focused on tensions around evading race in our after-school program for predominantly Latinx children and White pre-service teachers; how the authors re-mediated the material, ideational and relational resources of the program to address the tension; and the effects of our re-mediation on the adaptation of the program and how this shaped pre-service teachers’ engagement with children’s racialized experiences.
Findings
Re-mediating the design of ideational, relational, and material resources in the afterschool club allowed the designers to address how racial ideologies of color evasiveness limited opportunities for trust and mutual learning between the predominantly White preservice teachers and Latinx children.
Research limitations/implications
The paper describes how concerns with equity emerged and were addressed in a program in a particular place and time for particular people. It offers a systematic view into the inner-workings of designing for equity and why people’s lived experiences, history and social practices around engaging with processes of racialization and power matter for the design of learning.
Practical implications
The design narrative suggests practical implications including the need to develop coursework and practicum experiences that support pre-service teachers’ and educators’ study of how power, enacted through racial ideologies of color evasiveness and other forms of epistemic violence, frames and materially impacts our interactions with children from non-dominant groups.
Social implications
Two social implications from the design narrative include the following: the need to deepen the understandings of the past and present, proud and violent, histories of minoritized communities to organize consequential learning; and the need to recruit more students of color into the programs recognizing that it alone is not adequate for enacting educational justice.
Originality/value
As designers working toward equity, the authors must hold lightly onto their designs, be willing to let go of features that no longer serve the goals and develop new approaches that can help them achieve them. The authors must also attend seriously to the critiques offered by our youth-partners so that they can better support their learning and desires for the future.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper benefited from the participation of all of the members of the EPIC team - our university colleagues, Jovita Schiffer and our partners at Sanchez Elementary School, our preservice teachers, and our child-partners. We thank the University of Colorado’s School of Education, Women Investing in the School of Education program, and the Office of Outreach and Engagement for their financial support. Kris Gutiérrez, Sarah Hug, and Molly V. Shea offered thoughtful commentary on this paper and we are glad to have them as critical friends and colleagues.
Citation
Jurow, A.S. and Freeman, Q. (2020), "Re-mediating designs for equity: making commitments concrete", Information and Learning Sciences, Vol. 121 No. 9/10, pp. 711-728. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-01-2020-0003
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited