Beyond Safe Space: A Philosophical and Participatory Design Inquiry Into the Affordances of "Safe-Enough" Places for Undergraduate Students of Color

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Workplace Injustice, Critical Race Theory Bans, and Safe Spaces of Students of Color: Critical Issues for Policy and Practice (Table 5)

Abstract

"Safe space" has become the subject of a contemporary controversy in higher education, a debate which has often juxtaposed it against free speech. However, "safe space" is more than just a provocative hot-button issue, destined to lose its limelight over time; it acts as an important instigator for crucial deliberations about the purpose of higher education, efforts toward diversity and inclusion, and educators' responsibility to crafting learning environments. This philosophical inquiry begins by problematizing each pillar of the "safe space" concept - safety and spatiality - to delineate exactly how each of these terms is operationalized in the campus wars and what enduring implications it might have on university teachin+G20g and learning. This investigation is bolstered by a participatory design research (PDR) (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) study, which partners with five undergraduate students of color at one predominantly white institution (PWI) to explore their lived experience with a campus space. This project engages students in multiple modalities of expression, including interviews, drawing, walking, photography, and focus groups, to develop a concrete agenda for re-designing a PWI learning ecology responsive to their own thriving and learning. This interdisciplinary inquiry bridging philosophy and PDR not only responds to a contemporary controversy that holds sway within the public imagination, it also anchors the conversation about safe space within enduring educational dilemmas that will still be relevant long after the uproar subsides, such as how to evaluate competing purposes of (higher) education and how to support the learning and thriving of all students.

Author

• Samantha Ha DiMuzio, Boston College
  Presenting Author