Designers' Beliefs About Diversity and 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

There is rich and generative work demonstrating the cultural nature of teaching and learning. Those charged with designing learning environments and the learners who enter these spaces come equipped with multiple repertoires of practice—discourses, dispositions, values, worldviews, beliefs—that have been developed and shaped as a result of participation in the everyday shared activities of their communities (Cole, 1996; Erickson, 2002; Rogoff, 2003; Lee, Spencer, & Harpalani, 2003). Yet, despite the general consensus that these repertories of practice are central to understanding how people learn, there is a dearth of research regarding their influence on the process of designing learning environments, especially in informal settings. I add that we have a heightened responsibility as researchers to understand designers’ repertoires of practice in the cases where their (or their institution’s) goals include diversity, inclusion, equity, or social justice, particularly given this political moment.

This paper highlights the results of an interview study with science museum workers (who I position as designers of informal learning environments), which I conducted in an effort to understand: 1) the range of beliefs, values, and worldviews museum workers have about racial/ethnic/cultural diversity, and 2) the pedagogical practices they engage in when designing for diverse publics. The broader context for this study is the underrepresentation of communities of color in museum settings in concert with the museum field’s recent calls to diversify their audiences (Farrell & Medvedeva, 2010). Findings from this study show that there are key tensions between designers’ beliefs about diversity and their goal of designing equitable learning environments including: the belief that racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds need not play a role in learning; the difficulty of designing for multiple epistemologies when espousing the universality of science and the museum experience; and the potential ways that institutional resistance to defining equity, diversity, and inclusion may be contributing to an unequal distribution of opportunities to learn. Scholars have posited that an equity-oriented pedagogy: 1) understands that diverse learners are embedded in communities that give them tools for making sense of the world; 2) takes seriously the ideas and ways of knowing that learners from diverse communities have; and 3) positions these ideas and ways of knowing as intellectual resources by making explicit connections to them (Lee, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Cazden & Leggett, 1976; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992; Gutierrez, 2008). While these tenets have been critical in advancing our knowledge of how to design equitable educational experiences, they say little about the role of the designer. What skills do designers need to deploy an equity-oriented pedagogy? What expertise should they have? More importantly, what beliefs should they have in order to carry out this work? Given that designers’ beliefs play a crucial role in the way they formulate goals and define the task of designing (Nespor, 1987 with regards to teachers), I argue that designers’ beliefs about diversity should be examined and seen as an integral part of equity-oriented design research.

Author

• Krystal R. Villanosa, Northwestern University