Embracing the Speculative via Utopian Methodology: The Role of Heterochrony (Poster 6)

• In Event: Designing for Racial Justice Through Speculative Pedagogies: Learning to Build Liberatory Futures

Abstract

Objectives
The urgently needed transition from unsustainable, fossil-fuel-dependent activities to sustainable activities can be approached as a process of learning among individuals, communities and societies. This paper advances understanding of utopian methodologies – a speculative form of design-based research that can guide the process of envisioning, implementing, and sustaining alternative forms of activity systems in response to the climate crisis (authors, 2023; Gutierrez et al., 2020). The paper aims to elucidate how different developmental timescales intersect in a utopian methodological study. Existing research on utopian methodologies point to methodological difficulties of examining – often non-linear and heterochronic – development of individuals and activities at multiple timescales (Cole, 2016; Sannino, 2020; authors, 2023). The following research question guides our inquiry: What is the role of heterochrony in utopian methodology?

Theoretical Framework
Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory, our emphasis is on the cultural and institutional organization of human action. We examine culturally organized activities in their institutional settings and wider socio-historical contexts. Cultural mediation constitutes a fundamental precondition for the development of individuals and activities. Our focus is on heterochrony, referring to how the development of individuals and activities occurs in contexts in a mutual interchange at intersecting timescales (Cole, 2016).

Methods
We examine a long-term research-practice partnership (Coburn & Penuel, 2016) with a rural Finnish upper secondary school teacher and students. The research participants implemented projects, which sought to reimagine and change the existing forms of activity in the school and the neighborhood. Our utopian methodological approach was guided by the method of social design experimentation (Gutiérrez et al., 2020). The ethnographic data – collected during 2020-2022 – include field notes, and student and teacher interviews, which are analyzed using an inductive qualitative analysis approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1997) based on open coding of excerpts that form thematically coherent, continuous units of analysis.

Findings
The findings illuminate a pattern of successes and failures in the long-term commitment of the teacher and students to change the local practices of the school and municipality. Multiple developmental timescales were implicated in the process of individual and communal learning. The planetary timescale of the climate crisis provided the motive and legitimation for the projects and energized cultural-historical change in the politically conservative rural area of the school. Over time, the teacher and students could overcome institutional and sociocultural obstacles for their activity and implement modest changes in the school and the municipality, including questioning unsustainable farming practices. At the personal level, the students’ emerging identities as active citizens capable of taking climate actions were implicated in the wider cultural-historical learning process of the municipality.

Significance
This study contributes to understanding of the key issue how to design for sustainable change by providing a nuanced analysis of heterochronia involved in research seeking to promote and examine social transformation. Furthermore, our analysis advances empirical basis for understanding and critiquing the social forces at work that constrain us and our theorizing – essential goals in constructing theory and planning the next steps of inquiry.

Authors

• Antti J. Rajala, University of Eastern Finland

• Michael Cole, University of California - San Diego

• Moises Esteban Guitart, University of Girona