Conjecture Mapping in Participatory Design Research: Opportunities, Challenges, and Innovations in Design Partnerships

• In Event: Conjecture Mapping: New Approaches to Broadening Processes of Educational Design Research

Abstract

Purpose:
Sandoval (2014) articulated conjecture mapping as a tool for moving beyond describing the high-level ethos of design based research (DBR) to clearly document DBR as a methodology. Bang and Vossoughi (2016) present important high-level ethos of Participatory Design Research (PDR) as a transformative approach to research, but as a field we have not yet articulated clear ways to conceptualize and carry out PDR. Could PDR benefit from an argumentative grammar that conjecture mapping provides? In this conceptual paper, I explore the opportunities of conjecture mapping for documenting the processes of partnering critical to PDR.

Perspective, methods & data:
This investigation is based in a PDR collaboration between myself and a high school chemistry teacher, Ms. B, in which we designed and implemented a sociopolitically-oriented climate change intervention. We have used conjecturing mapping primarily to articulate design conjectures and began exploring how we could use the tool to document the role of relational dynamics in shaping the forms of learning that emerge in and through our design (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). Drawing on memos and artifacts from co-design sessions, I explore the question: what are the opportunities and challenges for documenting relationality through conjecture mapping?

Findings & significance:
Conjecture mapping offered an opportunity for cultivating a shared community of practice. Like Booker and Goldman (2016) in their collaboration with parents, Ms. B and I did not start our partnership with a shared understanding of the systemic issues facing students or strategies for re-mediating issues in science learning (Bang et al., 2010). Iterating on our conjecture map, which included cycles of design and analysis while attending to our agency and positionality, allowed Ms. B and I to collectively decide “what counts” as a good instructional resource or learning outcome.
Conjecturing mapping in the PDR context was also challenging and issues remain unresolved. PDR’s attention to power, critical historicity and proleptic opportunities for the future (Cole, 1996; Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) were challenging for us to make visible. We found that maps only helped us document when we agreed and not when we disagreed, and we never figured out how to document temporality which limited our ability to reflect on historicity and prolepsis.
Ms. B and I developed simple innovations that helped us document relationality. We wanted to capture how relationships shifted and expanded the objects of our design (Zavala, 2016). This innovation involved annotating our map with the trajectory of relationships on top of the design conjecture arrows (Figure 1). Sandoval (2014) proposed that these arrows should trace interactions of design elements with hypothesized mediating processes and in our innovation we traced relationships as part of those interactions. These relational moments, documented as part of design conjectures, shaped the ways we looked for the mediating processes and assessed outcomes. We humbly share the story of these opportunities, challenges and innovations to spark conversations about the ways in which conjecture maps, as one tool of DBR, might help the vibrant and diverse community working in PDR to communicate our methods.

Author

• Heather F. Clark, California State University - Dominguez Hills