Learning through Covid-19: Social Justice and the digital divide | 15 July
What does social justice in learning design look like?
- Introduction
I’ve had a bit of a history with social justice education – it’s often mentioned in the same discussions as civics and citizenship education, human rights education and a few other areas in which I have either a broad or specific interest. Having said that, I’ve never considered myself an expert on social justice, or social justice education: there are far more capable scholars out there who are doing important work in this space (including, I would argue, a number from the UK or Europe that I follow on Twitter), who have provided thought-provoking and at times challenging discussions to me. I also recognise that social justice education (that is, learning about social justice issues) is a different matter to social justice in learning design (which could be defined as learning in a way that is socially just), but I think my interest in social justice education might provide a starting point for this discussion of social justice in learning design.One of my subjects in the Graduate Certificate is called Critique: Issues in Learning Design, and it will certainly cover issues around social justice, at least in a discussion about what inclusion means and how it might be used. More importantly, it will look at the practice of social justice education within a learning design framework. For this subject (and indeed, for much of the Graduate Certificate), I have made a conscious effort to situate the content of the course as close to practice as possible. With social justice in education in mind, then, I think that we need to move beyond the policy level, and look at the practitioner level, which fits quite nicely with the purpose of these seminar. So, to begin with, I want to make a few key points relating to social justice in learning design.
- Inclusionary vs Exclusionary
The first thing that I want to say is that it’s really important to take a broad view of what it means to be ‘socially-just’ in terms of education. Too often, I think the conversation becomes narrowed about meeting the needs of a specific, often marginalised group – that is, it becomes about students with special needs, or students from specific cultural backgrounds, or students with limited English, or something like that. While I do agree that there does need to be a focus on these particular groups, it is the application of where that focus is placed that is the important part. This is an idea that is supported by Hockings’ definition of social justice education as something that ‘embraces a wide range of differences and explores their effects on individual learning’ (2010, p. 2).
Again, this is not a particularly novel idea; it’s another way of describing universal approaches to education, which is most well-known as Meyer’s and Rose’s Universal Design for Learning (2020). Of course, UDL is drawn from broader ideas of universal design in fields like architecture, for example, and basically calls for a shift from focusing on the deficits of the individual and attempting to remedy them, and instead suggests that the deficit lies in society, and we should change societal approaches in order to meet the needs of all.
This ideas has wider applications than supporting targeted minority groups. An example shared with me by a colleague who is an expert in Inclusive Education related to the importance of designing apps so that they can be used with one hand. Clearly, this is important for people that have a permanent disability – but it’s more important than just that. It’s also important for people with a temporary disability – e.g. broken arms for example. And it’s also important for those kinds of people with some kind of temporary impairment – parents holding babies in one hand, for example. By designing for universality, you can ensure that your app, in this case, is accessible for all of these groups, and not just limited to the two handed population,.
- Interactivity… what it means to me (the learner).
Another aspect that I want to focus on is the principles that are related to user centred and user experience design. Again, while this is more commonly related to product design, I think that it has some application to learning design, especially in terms of our online responses to COVID19. The point that I want to make is that, too often, we design based on what we know- rather than what students do. A good example of this is in terms of interactivity. I think most people would agree that including elements of interactivity in our lessons – whether online or face to face – is a good idea. And there are lots of ways that we might do this – choice, class discussions, group work, Socratic circles, the list goes on. But often what institutions mean when they talk about interactivity is not the same as what young people mean. This is an example that is particularly true in terms of building online engagement with young people. Large organisations often plan for interactivity by allowing users to do things like liking or sharing or even commenting on posts – and then are perplexed when young people avoid their carefully designed and very expensive websites in droves, preferring to spend their time on websites that allow them to engage in some form of co-creation: this is what interactivity means for a young person. I like David Wiley’s ideas about the 5 Rs for access here, as a way to think about privileging the view of young people within the learning design.
An interesting way of encouraging this level of interactivity is by considering Fraser’s (2007) three dimensional theory of social justice. This model argues that social justice can be enacted through redistribution, recognition and representation. By increasing student-led interactivity, we are actually targeting representation, at a very small level, by including students in decision making processes within our classrooms.
- Small Social Justice Learning Design Online
The final point that I want to make is related to that idea of ‘small level’ changes. I quite like Small Teaching by James Lang and Small Teaching Online by Flower Darby’s and Lang, as an introduction to the practice of teaching online. There’s lots that’s good in there, but the part that really struck me is the ‘small’ part. They argue that what we need to do- to ensure that our students have the best learning experiences possible – is focus less on the institutional approaches, and instead look at what small, incremental changes we can make in our classroom.