Endogenous Design as a Framework for Equity

• In Event: 51.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 51.078-4 - Tensions and Possibilities for Reimagining Equity-Based Design Research

Abstract

In most design research studies, researchers research, and participants participate. This dichotomy of roles leads to asymmetrical relations between researchers and participants. What happens when we design and study learning environments that position participants as designers? If design can be exogenous (developed externally by designer-researcher) and endogenous (developed internally by participants) how then do we account for endogenous design in design research (Zavala, 2016)? I discuss the possibilities and potentialities of endogenous design by addressing tensions inherent to equitable design research. I consider endogenous design in the context of a coding camp that engages youth in creating technological solutions for community issues they identify.

Endogenous design refers to a type of design birthed out of cultural-historical practices and processes. Endogenous design is imbued with the institutional logic of the local environments under study as well as “the logic of the life and study activities of the learners” (Zavala, 2016, p. 238). Typically, the endogenous designer is positioned as a participant, user, or learner and endogenous design is hidden in traditional research designs that do not allow role re-mediation between researcher and participant (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). The research question, and therefore the outcomes of interest, are generally determined by the researcher. These questions must first pass the scrutiny of educational theory and as a result, practical questions derived from the practitioners are given less import. Thus researchers decide what is important to foreground and what is insignificant enough to background.

There is a tension between practical relevance and theoretical contributions that is inherent in design research. Endogenous design gives us a framework that helps us to contest researcher values and practices. Moreover, endogenous design “opens questions not just about the democratization of knowledge but how the inclusion of participants shape design practices and how these in turn are shaped by the spaces that make design possible” (Zavala, 2016, p. 247). Endogenous design helps us to question whose values and visions are centered, and whose are marginalized.

The setting for this study is a 5-day camp that teaches coding, design-thinking, and public speaking as interconnected, interdependent resources for civic engagement. Data sources included field notes, interviews, facilitator notes, and video-recordings of camp activities. I paid key attention to the ways in which students questioned, criticized, re-shaped, reflected on and departed from the designed (exogenous) activity. I examined how the rules of engagement, division of labor, and inter-subject relations mediated a transformation of the object within the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1980). I looked at how power and positionality were constructed and embedded in all interactions, including mine. Some key questions guiding inquiry included: How do facilitators and students position one another? How does that positionality change over time? I argue that endogenous design requires role remediation on the part of both the researcher and the participant. Therefore to make room for the endogenous designer, the researcher’s role and position must also change.

Author

• Anna Bethune, Northwestern University