Socially Just Education: A South African Perspective
A/Prof Daniela Gachago, daniela.gachago@uct.ac.za
15th of April 2024
Overview
From Equality to Equity to Social Justice
Social Justice - a South African perspective
The problem with Learning Design
Towards a Compassionate Learning Design
Example from my own practice
Final thoughts
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Layout options
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Social Justice - a SA perspective
Global influences: neoliberalism, commercialisation of T&L, metrification of knowledge, economic downturn/austerity measures
Between a rock and hard place: excellence and social redress (Swartz et al, 2019)
Student protests: call for decolonisation of curricula
Wider and more nuanced definition of diversity / importance of context
Transformation: both personal and systemic
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My own practice as a learning designer
Source: www.freepik.com
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Source: Retegi, A., Sauvage, B., Predan, B., Tomás, E., Schosswohl, G., Kaltenbrunner, M., & Draganovská, D. (2019). The Co-create Handbook for Creative Professionals. Co-Create Consortium.http://www.cocreate.training
Human-centred design
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“Design is a living practice, not a done thing. It is a medium for building relationship between ourselves and those who will benefit from or be harmed by our design choices; and as such, design is iterative, a praxis—a process of doing, examining, reflecting, doing... and of never getting so set in our ways that we forget there are always new things to try”. (Morris, 2021)
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“At the core of co-design is participation. Genuine participation means ethical commitment to include all the voices, including marginalized groups that could be affected by decision-making.”
(Co-Create Basics)
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Co-design
If we believe design thinking is the right tool to use to redesign products, systems, and institutions to be more equitable, �then we must redesign the design thinking process, mindsets and tools themselves to ensure they mitigate for the causes of inequity -
the prejudices of the human designers in the process, both their explicit and implicit personal biases, and the power of mostly invisible status quo systems of oppression... �
(EquityXDesign, 2016)
eXd framework
3 Beliefs:
5 Design principles:
Historical Context (See)
Radical Inclusion (Be Seen)
Process as Product (Foresee)
Design at the margins
Start with yourself
Cede Power
Make the invisible visible
Speak to the future
Who we are directly affects our
design decisions.
Welcome !
Daniela Gachago, Maha Bali and Nicola Pallitt
‘Compassion is a cultivated feeling about emotion. It is a place where how we feel, how we think, and how we act come together. In other words, compassion is a cultivated practice, not an isolated, rational judgement about the world.’ (Curtin, 2014, loc. 1101)
‘[compassion] goes beyond the feeling-for or feeling-with an individual and moves towards understanding the social and political structures of our society. This then is much more than ‘putting oneself in the other’s shoes’, but assumes responsibility for one’s own role in somebody else’s story. It creates urgency for practice, for action.’ (Segal, 2007)
Com/passion
‘We define compassion within the context of learning design along four dimensions: a desire to create more participative spaces, a recognition of power and positionality and how this affects our ability to participate and finally a centreing of care and affect in the learning process.”
Participation
How do you know what your students need? How do you start to find out?
What have you found out? What surprised you? What else would you like to find out?
What would you like not to find out? What are your boundaries?
Student as Partners
“Co-creation of the curriculum [is a] process of student engagement that encourages students and staff members to become partners, each with a voice and a stake in curriculum development” (Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2017).
Healey, 2014
Bovill, 2017; 2020
From designing with empathy to co-designing with compassion based on Wehipeihana (2013)
Justice
Once you have found out who your students are and what they need, how does that impact your teaching and their learning? What have you done to respond to your diverse students’ needs? What are examples of how you have made your interactions with students more equitable? What challenges have you encountered?
What is social justice?
Social justice is a concept that requires the organisation of social arrangements that make it possible for everyone to participate equally in society. Fraser (2005) considers social justice as ‘participatory parity’ economically, culturally and politically.
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social_Justice_Pride_Flag.png
Justice
An understanding of power and positionality and how that affects our ability to participate
Identity-Based Socially Ascribed Power Graph
Visualize Power
light skin
dark skin
english first
english second
young
old
rich
poor
gender conforming
gender nonconforming
able bodied
disabled
male
female
straight
lgbtqia+
christian
non christian
college educated
non-college educated
documented
undocumented
Care
Care for self and others
Care as personal and systemic
Is care always good care?
Joan Tronto’s ethic of care (1990, 1993, 2001, 2013)
Joan Tronto (1993). Moral Boundaries:
A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.
Ethics of Care defined
...a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web (see Tronto 1993, 103; Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40).
Bali & Zamora: Equity/Care matrix (2023)
Examples of Participation, Justice and Care in my own practice
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Example 1: Ungrading in an PGDIP course
“I liked what [the facilitators] were doing, you know, that whenever you're suggesting something, they would add it right there. And then in front of you, and that will be part of the course you know, for the following groups, that slide was going to be used. I liked that. So it changed my mind that one has not doesn't have to be rigid, they have to be flexible.” (course participant)
Govender, Immenga and Gachago (under review): Inclusion and Equity in Higher Education: Designing for Complexity and Uncertainty
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“If I think about specific people I would hazard that the people who “took the most out” of the course were people who already had a postgraduate qualification, who came from historically advantaged, culturally white/liberal educational backgrounds, and who were able to adopt the linguistic and attitudinal markers that pointed to “successful" learning in the course. Students who either came from more conservative institutions, or who held more traditional beliefs about teaching and learning, or who did not have extensive exposure to progressive discourses around teaching and learning in many ways found the course difficult to find their feet in, and even more difficult to succeed in.” (facilitator)
Govender, Immenga and Gachago (under review): Inclusion and Equity in Higher Education: Designing for Complexity and Uncertainty
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Example 2: Co-creating a 3rd year UG Commerce course
Focus groups and redesign workshops
Equity-oriented pedagogy for diverse partners in the co-creation of knowledge
“That diversity of people that made up the group. And that you had both academics and people in corporates and in NPOs. That gave me a different perspective on some of the concepts that I thought I was familiar with. Just getting a different understanding or lens on these concepts and hearing it from people who are practically applying these in their day-to-day work or activities, so that for me was quite valuable and I enjoyed that.” (design participant)
(Jaga, Gachago & Farista, in press: Designing with others - reflections on a co-created learning design process to decolonise People Management)
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Facilitator’s reflection
“...I was with two white women and I sensed I needed to step in as there was a bit of this white privilege or white bias coming up. And I thought like now I had to say something, but it was also, you know, taken very graciously. So I think there was space to kind of challenge certain [assumptions]…Or at least respond to when people said something that I thought we could unpack a bit more, you know? So I did feel there was some sort of trust to say things that in other spaces might not be possible, might feel uncomfortable, especially with people that…you know, it's not like we had created trust or we had worked with each other before. It was really… we were thrown into this space online, you know, for a very short period of time. But somehow it worked to be able to speak. And I will, I mean, for me it was about the small groups, and breaking up groups and putting them in many different smaller groups all the time.”
(Jaga, Gachago & Farista, in press: Designing with others - reflections on a co-created learning design process to decolonise People Management)
Example 3: Student-led development of a leadership academy
Student-led design process
Co-creation of workshop and research methodology
Participatory visual action techniques
“… our team was intentional about creating an environment where every voice mattered. A space where ideas were nurtured, where students were encouraged to explore uncharted territories of thought that might have otherwise been stifled. This safe space was a testament to the belief that the best solutions arise when everyone has a seat at the table.” (student facilitator)
(Reddy, Roberts, Mosienyane, Gachago & Immenga (draft): Navigating Power Dynamics in Student-Staff Partnerships: EquityXDesign meets Third Spaces in Co-Designing a South African Leadership Programme)
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“When taking the stage, I was not particularly nervous because it was just myself and the team discussing our research during our Thursday meetings and then later fully experiencing our research in action when we had the first DALA iiNkhokeli workshop. After my presentation, it was question time. I expected a few grilling questions as the first part of our team name has connotations of slang, however, the manner in which one of the questions was asked left me quite speechless, initially. When I regained my consciousness I was able to speak clearly even when further questioning arose. It made me realise the gravity of our task but also the power imbalance in every ‘teamwork’ task. Our motto is ‘student as partners’ but when I spoke it did not feel as if I was a partner, rather another student who was being reprimanded because they have not done what was expected of them. The experience was eye-opening in the sense that even when our student voices through this experience were undermined or questioned, we remained steadfast as it is ‘students as partners’ after-all.” (student facilitator)
(Reddy, Roberts, Mosienyane, Gachago & Immenga (draft): Navigating Power Dynamics in Student-Staff Partnerships: EquityXDesign meets Third Spaces in Co-Designing a South African Leadership Programme)
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Socially Just LD in the South African context?
“third space as a place of reflection, renewal, and change in which two supposedly oppositional worlds are re-imagined to identify tensions, conflicts, exaggerations of distance, commonalities across domains, sources of insight, and inspiration for action” (Flessner, 2014, p.236)
(Reddy, Roberts, Mosienyane, Gachago & Immenga (draft): Navigating Power Dynamics in Student-Staff Partnerships: EquityXDesign meets Third Spaces in Co-Designing a South African Leadership Programme)
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Orientations towards future and �equity-oriented LD �(Gachago, Bali and Pallitt, 2023)
awareness of context,
matter matters,
co-creating with humans and non-humans,
relationality and connection,
modelling vulnerability,
the entanglement of the personal and political,
and creating transformative spaces.
“Design is a living practice, not a done thing. It is a medium for building relationship between ourselves and those who will benefit from or be harmed by our design choices; and as such, design is iterative, a praxis—a process of doing, examining, reflecting, doing... and of never getting so set in our ways that we forget there are always new things to try”. (Morris, 2021)
Thank you - any questions?
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