Exploring the Application of Liberatory Design in Service of Designing & Implementing Racial Equity Interventions

• In Event: Perspectives on Racial Equity Practices: From Design to Impact

Abstract

Background: Educators have at their disposal a growing range of tools, curricula, and resources for advancing racial equity in their school systems. Yet, in our work as a nonprofit intermediary supporting schools to make systemic change, what we have found is critical for racial equity work to meaningfully take root in schools is the approach leaders take to identify, design, and implement those practices. We put forth Liberatory Design as a theoretically-informed and practitioner-tested process for engaging in racial equity and anti-oppression work.

Theoretical Framework: A transdisciplinary approach, Liberatory Design is rooted in studies on structural racialization (Powell, 2006); the growing field of anthro-complexity (Snowden, 2007); complexity leadership theory (Uhl-Bien, 2006); and human-centered design (Gordon et al., 2016). LD brings together key insights from across these literatures in a set of flexible processes that support leaders to expand their habits of mind and practice when making decisions and taking action to affect equity-centered systems change. The application of Liberatory Design is built on three core beliefs: (a) systemic inequities and institutional racism are intentionally designed systems, which means they can be redesigned; (b) to genuinely prioritize equity, designers must involve the communities most affected by inequity in the design process; and (c) designing for equity necessitates the deliberate use of processes informed by equity and complexity when addressing social justice issues (Cary & Malarkey, 2020). Liberatory Design aims to transform power by shifting the relationships between those who hold power to design and those impacted by these designs; and to generate critical learning and increased agency for those involved in the design work.

Techniques: LD aims to create a process that leads to more effective actions by highlighting the importance of navigating complexities together in real-time. Through LD, leaders learn key mindsets (ways of thinking) and modes (ways of doing) that facilitate their capacity to work collaboratively in service of racial equity. This approach distinguishes itself from more traditional technical training by setting the expectation that leaders can grow their equity mindsets while taking action toward equity; LD maintains that internal (self) equity work and external (systems) equity work can and should happen simultaneously, rather than sequentially.

Significance: Liberatory Design has seen rapid take-up in the field, both nationally with educational leaders working to transform inequitable learning environments (Stovall, Timmons-Long, Rodney, Hall, 2023), and internationally, having been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. While it rests on a strong theoretical foundation, we are just beginning to more formally and intentionally research its use and impacts. Recent semi-structured interviews of early education leaders employing LD to co-design a statewide Racial Equity Plan illuminated key themes: LD provides language to support repair in the midst of equity interventions and provides processes to support the building of relational trust, fostering a new way of being in space with people. Continued empirical research is warranted to further investigate in which contexts and under which conditions LD processes are most effective at advancing systemic equity work in school contexts and beyond.

Author

• Casta Guillaume, National Equity Project