Building Axiological Rigor for Centering Justice in Continuous Improvement

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: The Evolving Landscape of Improvement: Theorizing for the Future of Improvement in Education

Abstract

Continuous improvement’s emergence as an educational improvement approach has raised questions about the visions of schooling that are implicated in CI work. This paper argues that CI’s origins and stances make it susceptible to upholding neoliberal visions of schooling, while also arguing that CI can be a potentially powerful approach to advancing justice-centered visions of schooling. To fulfill the promise of the latter, we develop the concept of axiological rigor, or the process of making visible, interrogating, and specifying the values that shape educational improvement efforts. Taking up key ideas from community-based design scholarship, we argue that building axiological rigor is a high-leverage approach to moving CI work closer to justice.

Authors

• Carlos Sandoval, Clemson University

• Rebecca Colina Neri, Stemuli Studios, Inc.

• Erica Misako Boas, San Francisco State University