Learning Lab: An Enacted Utopia Through the Fourth-Generation Activity Theory

• In Event: Breaking the Climate of No Alternatives: Power of Utopian Methodology

Abstract

This paper includes a multisite, longitudinal formative intervention study of the Culturally Responsive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (CRPBIS) Project that aims to disrupt racialization of school discipline in the state of Wisconsin. CRPBIS was initiated in 2011. Funded by multiple agencies (the state’s education agency, school districts, civic organizations, and a university), the project has built a strategic family-school-community-university coalition for systemic transformation. In the first phase of CRPBIS, the state’s entire student and school data were analyzed to examine the extent of racial disparities in school discipline. Next, an inclusive systemic design process, called Learning Lab, was implemented in local schools facing racial disparities.

In this session, I will present the design principles of Learning Lab as an example of fourth generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Engeström & Sannino, in press). I will then present empirical findings regarding how local stakeholders and organizations with diverse and often opposing interests built heterogenous coalitions that enacted a collective utopia and designed the future of their schools for inclusion, justice, and expansive learning.

Learning Lab is a formative intervention (Engeström, 2008). In formative interventions, local stakeholders partner with researchers/interventionists to transform their systems through articulation, examination, and resolution of contradictions. The role of the interventionists is to stimulate a transformation process led and owned by stakeholders (Gutiérrez, Engeström, & Sannino, 2016). Learning Labs were made up of 10-15 members, especially those who are historically excluded from schools’ decision-making activities. Members included students, parents, teachers, support staff (e.g., social workers and playground attendants), administrators, representatives of civic organizations (e.g., Urban League) and the university researchers.

Learning Lab has been implemented at six public schools (two elementary, two middle, and two high schools) in three districts. Learning Labs were interconnected, which enabled the refinement and adoption of the methodology based on the specific social-historical-spatial contexts of school communities. Leaning Labs met 8-10 times for two hours over an academic year. Following a cycle of expansive actions (Engeström, 2008), members first identified daily manifestations of contradictions related to discipline and analyzed their existing discipline systems and outcomes. Then, they designed new behavioral support systems to address those contradictions. The new systems were culturally responsive to their school communities’ diverse experiences, resources, interests, and goals. The new systems were to be implemented in the next academic year. The Learning Lab methodology is being adapted to different locales (five schools in Florida and two schools in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil) for facilitating systemic transformation with historically marginalized communities.

In this paper, I examined how Learning Lab members formed, collective transformative agency and designed a culturally responsive system as an enacted utopia. Data were generated through video recordings of meetings, interviews, and document analysis. To conduct a full-scale analysis of Learning Labs, the method of analysis of expansive actions (Engeström et al., 2013) and the emergence of transformative agency (Sannino, 2015) were utilized. I will share the empirical findings and discuss the possibilities and challenges regarding creating and enacting utopias from the ground-up with local stakeholders.

Author

• Aydin Bal, University of Wisconsin - Madison