Changing from Within: Narratives of Resistance from Equity-Oriented Learning Designers

Daniela Gachago, Maha Bali, & Nicola Pallitt

University of Cape Town, American University in Cairo, Rhodes University

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Research team

Daniela Gachago, Maha Bali and Nicola Pallitt

Gachago, D., Bali, M, & Pallitt, N. 2023. Changing from Within: Narratives of Resistance from Equity-Oriented Learning Designer. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 12(2). https://dx.doi.org/10.59668/722.13022

link to slides

Background

• Learning design and learning designers: ill defined field / roles / responsibilities
• Learning designers’ practice highly influenced by their context: the dominant organizational cultures, the assumptions, norms, and behaviors of their institutions, and wider societal systems
• Call for contributions to a special issue of the Journal for Applied Instructional Design on “Systems Thinking Designing for Equity”

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Socially just learning design project

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34 women learning design practitioners known for their social justice orientation

Aim to expand the notion of learning design and work towards a model / principles for socially just learning design

Learning design as part of ASD: instructional, technical, academic, and organizational support (Grupp, 2014 cited in Grupp & Little, 2019)

Academic staff development as resistance

• Ability of third space professionals to move outside disciplinary boundaries
• Agents of change (Roxå and Mårtensson (2017)
• ‘Everyday’ academic resistance engaged in individually or collectively, framed by feminist, decolonial, and intersectional theories which call for the need for multi-directional modes of resistances (Bottrell & Manathunga, 2019).
• Tensions that academic staff developers face: technology; academic development units’ purview and policies; university policies and priorities; academic programs; university leadership; and culture and external requirements. (Little and Green, 2012)

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Purpose of this paper

• Expanding Little and Green’s (2012; 2013) work on academic staff developers’ strategies to navigate institutional power dynamics (manifested in horizontal and vertical clashes)
• Adding an ecosystems perspective to show how learning designers’ different positionalities, histories, and educational and professional journeys impact how they navigate the difficult spaces of the department, institution, and institutional culture

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Study

• Focus on narrative of resistance
• Three major tensions:
• openness and care
• innovation,
• and transformation
• Vertical tensions around technology, and university leadership and culture according to Green & Little, 2012

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Robin, Director of the CoLab at Plymouth State�

“The CoLab... where I work... it's very central. We've changed the whole pedagogy of the campus. I'm in at the table for all the big decisions. I think it gets a ton of respect on my campus and has a ton of weight. That being said, you bring up the word ‘care’ in strategic planning, and you're just laughed out of the room... I've been absolutely shocked how willing they are to give me money and support me and put me in the front of so many initiatives and let me run the whole faculty, but you clearly wouldn't say the word ‘care’ in a strategic plan.”

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Maha, American University in Cairo

“I got a fund to bring the digital pedagogy [lab] to Cairo, 2016, one of my colleagues was in a session with them and she said: ‘I came out of it and now I feel like I’ve been in Maha’s brain’, because she’d been hearing me talk about this stuff but not consistently, right. But now she had to spend like a whole day with [them] ...and now she sort of understands what that was that I’ve been talking about all this time.”

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Alexandra, Maastricht University

“[This] contradicts and comes into tension with how I actually work...we try to put the design, the teacher and the students in the centre and not the technology and processes. But nevertheless, two weeks later, another request comes, can we showcase this small VR project that we have? It's always the attraction to these shiny things that don't necessarily have a pedagogical coverage. But ... they look nice, they feel modern. And the university leadership tends to be attracted, like children by shiny objects.”

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Edran,Ivy League, US

“I'm asked what like, 'what is your evidence? What is your research-based evidence for what you're saying? Because I can't believe that's true.' Or I'm told, 'well, we need more evidence, you know, we need more evidence that our students of colour are experiencing this form of marginalisation otherwise, it's not real.' And I kind of want to say, well, it's my experience, and my history is the evidence, is all the evidence, I need to know that this is something real.”

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Shared building blocks

1. Building community in and outside the institution
2. Seeing change as small and nonlinear
3. Centering care for self and others
4. Finding ways to stay true to yourself in relation to others

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adrienne maree brown

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“small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies” (2017, p. 3)

Emerging strategy (brown, 2017)

• the relationship between small and large, influenced by the concept of fractals, which shows that patterns repeat at scale;
• intentional adaptation, i.e. accepting that change is constant and intentional, not reactive but adaptive in ways that move us towards where we want to go;
• interdependence and decentralization, focusing on the importance of building authentic, intimate relationships, supporting mutual transformation and collaboration;
• non-linearity and iteration, recognizing that change comes from small cumulative shifts;
• resilience and transformative justice foregrounding the importance of affecting change systemically, addressing problems at their roots;
• and creating more possibilities, and accepting that there are many ways to grow in a healthy ecosystem.

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• "Adaptation is not about being reactionary, changing without intention, or being victimized, controlled, and tossed around by the inevitable changes of life. It’s about shaping change and letting changes make us stronger as individual and collective bodies."

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– adrienne maree brown (2021, p. 124)

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“While justice can be understood, can be felt, there is no template to follow, or checklist to work through for ensuring a just outcome. The requirements are humility, a respect for context, and a willingness to listen to the most marginalized voices... �Not all problems can be solved, but all problems can be illuminated.”

(Ursula Franklin, in Meredith, undated, para 13 & 18)

Any questions?

References

• brown, a.m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. Chico: AK Press.�brown, a.m. (2021). Holding change: The way of emergent strategy facilitation and mediation. Chico: AK Press.
• Green, D. A., & Little, D. (2013). Academic development on the margins. Studies in Higher Education, 38(4), 523–537.
• https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.583640
• Grupp, L., & Little, D. (2019). Finding a Fulcrum: Positioning Ourselves to Leverage Change. To Improve the Academy, 38(1), 95–110.
• https://doi.org/10.1002/tia2.20088?casa_token=j7xuhn3NR_UAAAAA:4grbMes03XaIhslCgjA4wp2h9bgxNgGgZGYHOq_dVn6R-4
• Little, D., & Green, D. A. (2012). Betwixt and between: Academic developers in the margins. International Journal for Academic Development, 17(3), 203–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2012.700895
• Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2017). Agency and structure in academic development practices: are we liberating academic teachers or are we part of a machinery suppressing them? International Journal for Academic Development, 22(2), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1218883

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