Design Tensions in Developing Partnerships in Challenging Circumstances

• In Event: Envisioning Futures in Times of Crisis: Lessons from School-University-Community Partnership Research & Practice

Abstract

As a field, we have developed multiple well-considered design-based approaches to partnerships. Among these are design-based implementation research (DBIR), which focuses on partnership work that is effective, sustainable, and scalable (Fishman et al., 2013); social design experiments, which focuses on transforming social institutions to further equity (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016); and participatory design research, which considers how partnership processes can reproduce oppressive hierarchies (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). These approaches emphasize the need for deep, reciprocal engagement across institutions – work that is highly important, but also time-consuming and expensive.
We know less about how to approach partnership work when circumstances are more dire – times when funding is in short supply, when schools, minoritized youth, and even the very notion of a public good are all under attack, and when goals of sustainability and scalability feel distant. How can we build partnerships that are, even if imperfect and impermanent, still valuable to partners and the youth they serve?

We present three design tensions relevant to building partnerships within non-ideal circumstances. We illustrate each with examples drawn from our decade of experience co-constructing multi-generational, maker-centered, university-community partnerships within the UC Links network’s California work (Authors, 2024), across multiple years and multiple partners, through swings in financial support, instability in institutional support, staff turnover, and the presence of destabilizing and destructive forces.

Tension 1 – Fully Collaborative Design Work vs. Ready-Made Programs
Community partners are often overtaxed and short on time and resources. In a new or low-resource partnership, how does one balance collaborative imagining and co-construction versus the efficiency of pre-established plans? Here, we offer one approach – presenting designs in a nested manner, with core commitments (e.g., approaches to equity) in the center, various participation structures (e.g., open maker-space vs. structured lessons) as a meso-level, and specific implementations (e.g., examples of prior student work) at the periphery.

Tension 2 – Planning vs. Action and Improvisation
Designers must balance planning with the importance of a “bias toward action” (Roth, 2015). Likewise, in any learning environment, educators must balance fidelity of implementation (Brown & Campione, 1996) with the importance of student voice and autonomy. Here, we add to the conversation through the consideration of “wiggle room” as a design principle for partnership work that balances structure with student voice (Authors1, 2018).

Tension 3 – Sustainability vs. Impermanence and Iteration
Given the history of both extractive approaches to educational research and scores of abandoned educational innovations, it is no wonder that sustainability is a commonly cited desiderata for partnership work. At the same time, impermanence is intrinsic to all design work, and wabi-sabi approaches to design can embrace and design for (societal and/or local) change (Tsaknaki & Fernaeus, 2016). Here we draw perspectives from our experiences leading maker spaces through the COVID-19 pandemic (Authors, 2024).

We offer these tensions not to retreat from ideal models of collaboration, but to further a design conversation on pursuing high-quality, mutual, equitable, and effective partnerships with scrappy, shoestring tenacity as we advocate for better support for this important work.

Authors

• Lee Michael Martin, University of California - Davis

• J.C. Leapman, University of California - Davis