Addressing Racial Injustice in the Settler-Colonial School System: Learning Lab as Utopian Future-Making

• In Event: The Struggle Against Oppression and Racial Injustice in Education

Abstract

Disproportionate representation of students of color in exclusionary school discipline (e.g., suspension, referral to law enforcement) is a critical equity issue since exclusionary discipline correlates to harmful academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes (e.g., school to prison nexus). Indigenous Learning Lab was implemented to address racial disproportionality that American Indian students experience at a rural public high school. Indigenous Learning Lab is a systemic design process that is informed by the cross-pollination between Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Freirean critical pedagogy. This study examines how Indigenous Learning Lab facilitated local stakeholders’ utopian future-making by means of Ruth Levitas’ (2006) three modes of utopian methodology—utopia as archeology, architecture, and ontological becoming—to design a new culturally responsive behavioral support system.

Authors

• Dosun Ko, Wichita State University

• Aydin Bal, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Aaron Bird Bear, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Linda Orie, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Dian Mawene, University of New Hampshire