Infrastructuring Insurgent Equity-Focused Educational Movements Within Educational Standards Implementation Projects (Poster 10)

• In Event: Advancing Understanding of Infrastructuring in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Background
We take infrastructuring to be a promising practice for supporting educational improvement (Bell, 2019; Penuel, 2019), but know that it is susceptible to regressive ideological dynamics tied to whiteness, colonialism, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems manifested through practices such as interest convergence and enactment of "system coherence" as cultural uniformity. We explore the equity potential of resourcing insurgent movements within decentralized educational improvement projects with concepts, imaginaries, and practices that support liberatory forms of education (hooks, 1994; Warren, et al., 2020). We pursue the question: Under what conditions can the strategic resourcing of insurgent, equity-focused educational movements within broader, decentralized initiatives support the efforts of those movements?

Methods
Across network improvement communities (Bryk, et al., 2010) focused on improving science and climate change education, we have engaged in design-based research that has co-designed open educational resources supporting professional learning centered on culturally expansive and justice-centered pedagogical approaches (e.g., multiple ways of knowing, antiracist pedagogy, Indigenous presencing). Infrastructuring is developed by collaborating participants working on specific initiatives—although the built infrastructures are broadly used across the country by many others. We analyze resource usage statistics, ethnographic interviews (Seidman, 2013) with authors and users of the infrastructure, and ethnographic accounts of resource use to understand and theorize how specific resources are being mobilized to support broader social justice movements by resourcing activities and by bringing educators into associated practices and commitments. We developed thematic memos through inductive and iterative analytic strategies to investigate patterns and points of contrast in the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

Findings
Our findings relate to infrastructuring across different units of analysis. When teachers became authors of equity resources it helped promote their professional visibility and reputation in novel ways. In terms of professional learning experiences, teacher educators routinely use specific resources to disrupt restrictive ideological stances and expand the educational imaginary of preservice and inservice teachers. Resources support individual and collective practice-based learning, but many educators also report on political uses of resources with administrators to warrant their equity work (e.g., antiracist science education). Resources are mobilized during organizational disputes when tensions arise around equity work. In the face of the moral panic manufactured around critical race theory, teachers used the infrastructure to build community, develop pedagogical capacity, and share tactical knowledge for still enacting critical pedagogy. The infrastructure along with coordinated social and financial resources supported the development of expanding teacher networks focused on liberatory pedagogy within broader standards implementation initiatives (Han, 2022).

Significance
Educational reform efforts have not typically been successful in desettling education (Bang, et al., 2012). The work highlights the possibilities of approaching infrastructuring as a relational practice for spreading insurgent, equity-focused educational approaches to far-flung actors through more mainstream endeavors. Strategically heterogenous, open education infrastructures show promise in resourcing liberatory approaches within established standards implementation initiatives (e.g., racial and linguistic justice, the centering family and youth knowledges and interests, promoting Indigenous ways of knowing, and normalizing a focus on equity in science education).

Authors

• Philip L. Bell, University of Washington

• Nancy Price, University of Washington