Summary
The fifth chapter of Design Justice, titled Design Pedagogies: “There’s Something Wrong with This System!”, presents Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock’s observations and perspectives at the intersection of education, pedagogy, and the design justice model.
The fifth chapter of Design Justice, titled Design Pedagogies: “There’s Something Wrong with This System!”, presents Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock’s observations and perspectives at the intersection of education, pedagogy, and the design justice model. The chapter begins with Dr. Costanza-Chock referencing Black feminist scholar bell hooks’ quote from her seminal work Teaching to Transgress. hooks emphasizes the integral role of feminist, antiracist education in transforming consciousness as a practice of freedom, promoting critical thinking not only in relation to the role of design in the world, but also in terms of power and liberation, encouraging action to transgress the boundaries of race, class, and gender.
“Critical pedagogy seeks to transform consciousness, to provide students with ways of knowing that enable them to know themselves better and live in the world more fully.”
—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (Page 174)
Costanza-Chock outlines the essential role of popular education as a foundation for Design Justice pedagogies. She employs the plural form “pedagogies” to reflect her firm belief that there is no singular answer to the question: “How might we teach and learn design justice?” Drawing from her personal teaching experiences, she explores key challenges to design justice pedagogies.
“Design justice is a framework that can help guide us as we seek to teach computing, software development, and design in ways that support, rather than suppress, the development of critical consciousness and that provide scaffolding for learners’ connections to the social movements that are necessary to transform our world.”
Page 209
While emphasizing the proposition that pedagogies related to design justice “must be based firmly upon the broader approach known as popular education, or pop ed,” Costanza-Chock credits Paulo Freire’s influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which Freire focuses on “developing critical thought together with action,” a process he refers to as praxis (the Greek term for “practical knowledge for action”). This encourages critical pedagogy, wherein the educator’s role is to “pose problems, create spaces for the collective development of critical consciousness, help develop plans for action to make the world a better place, and foster a sense of agency among learners.” A key aspect of this is that it involves open, honest reflection on the world, ensuring that learners take accountability, adopt appropriate measures, and engage in collective actions to promote inclusivity, with the ultimate goal of positively transforming the world and improving living conditions for marginalized communities.
To elucidate the role of popular education (pop ed) in U.S. social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Costanza-Chock highlights the example of the Highlander Research and Education Center, founded in 1932 by educator Myles Horton. Horton worked with Civil Rights luminaries including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and John Lewis, and the center has consistently employed pop ed to “build grassroots leadership within movements for civil rights, organized labor, and environmental justice, among others.”
Costanza-Chock underscores the growing need for technology to serve as an intersectional, inclusive tool for liberation by integrating pop ed approaches into technology design practices. She argues that this can be achieved by supporting collective efforts to cultivate a shared understanding of ICT infrastructure and improve the quality of life for marginalized communities in the United States, while also fostering real learning through reflection on society’s prevailing issues and taking affirmative, effective action to transform the world.
Costanza-Chock also emphasizes the increasing importance of incorporating Participatory Action Design (PAD) methods, citing multiple real-world examples in the chapter. She connects PAD with other liberatory frameworks, including critical community technology pedagogy, data feminism, constructionism, and aspects of digital media literacy, all of which align closely with pop ed principles in design pedagogies. Additionally, Costanza-Chock highlights the significance of decolonizing design pedagogy, a crucial step she advocates in her proposition. Furthermore, Costanza-Chock notes that in their 2019 book Data Feminism, data scientists, artists, researchers, and educators Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein include a section titled “Teach Data Like an Intersectional Feminist,” where they outline an intersectional feminist approach to the pedagogy of data science. This approach is grounded in “values of equity, ethics, and co-liberation,” supported by compelling arguments and real-world classroom examples. The emphasis is on teaching data science in a way that incorporates values such as ethics and emotions, rather than focusing solely on reason, thereby establishing a balance between inclusivity, collaboration, and accountability to society.
The concept of critical community technology pedagogy was developed by designer, educator, and former MIT Codesign Studio participant Maya Wagoner. This approach “demystifies systemic power inequalities, involves a multi-directional learning process, results in transferable skills, and constructs a new world as it constructs knowledge.”
Another crucial approach highlighted by Costanza-Chock is constructionist pedagogy, developed by Seymour Papert. In this approach, teachers and instructors act as facilitators, guiding students to achieve their own learning goals through problem-based learning. This pedagogy centers on context and situated knowledge, emphasizing “learning by doing.” Problem-based and project-based learning are particularly effective for twenty-first-century learners as they inherently place responsibility and accountability on the learners while providing ample space for reflection on real-world problems.
Costanza-Chock also cites Mitchel Resnick, a professor at the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) group, who studied with Papert and continues to develop a wide variety of pedagogical tools. Among Resnick’s notable contributions are key developments in LEGO Mindstorms, designed to teach the principles of robotics, and Scratch. Ultimately, for Resnick and other creators of Scratch.
“…there needs to be a shift in how people think about programming, and about computers in general. We need to expand the notion of ‘digital fluency’ to include designing and creating, not just browsing and interacting.”
Page 184
A central tenet of this chapter is the focus on ‘Democratizing Design Education.’ A key component of the design justice model involves working at the societal level. It is important to note that Resnick and many of his students at the Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) group are consistently working against the prevailing educational inequalities that disadvantage girls, low-income youth, and/or youth of color. These inequalities, as they argue, “block the democratization of computing skills and knowledge.”
Decolonizing and Democratizing design education
Costanza-Chock focuses on the convergence of pedagogies in the context of democratizing design education. Furthermore, a particularly crucial step in this process is the emphasis on decolonizing design pedagogies.
“…Accordingly, in a constructionist pedagogy of design justice, learners should make knowledge about design justice for themselves and do so through working on meaningful projects. Ideally, these should be developed together with, rather than for, communities that are too often excluded from design processes. Along with the shifts in design pedagogy toward community-led processes, intersectional feminist principles, and learning by doing described here so far, the idea of decolonizing design pedagogy is gaining steam. Decolonizing design involves decentering Western approaches to design pedagogy, while centering design approaches, histories, theories, and practices rooted in indigenous communities.”
Page 185
To illustrate this, Costanza-Chock cites the example of Dori Tunstall, the new dean of the Design School at OCAD Toronto who is particularly working to decolonize the design school curriculum. Other key educators like Sadie Red Wing, a Lakota/Dakota graphic designer best known for her work designing visual materials for the Mni Wiconi/Water Is Life struggle at Standing Rock, who teaches a course on decolonizing design at the University of Redlands, and Pouya Jahanshahi at Oklahoma State University, Kali Nikitas at Otis College of Art and Design, Ian Lynham at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Steven McCarthy at the University of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Chin at the ArtCenter College of Design are also involved in the decolonizing design pedagogies process. There is also reference to the website decolonisingdesign.com. Design historian and scholar Victor Margolin is also cited, with reference to an influential article titled “Teaching Design History,” who, according to Constanza-Chock :
“… advocates a shift away from Eurocentric, modernist approaches to design history and toward a truly global approach that includes design practices from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He cautions against sprinkling “non-Western” design objects on top of an already existing Eurocentric curriculum, and argues that “design is no less than the conception and planning of the artificial world. Its products include objects, processes, systems, and environments; in short, everything… Margolin feels that an emphasis on rethinking historical narratives to center formerly marginalized or erased design practices, rather than simply including designed objects from more cultures, can help avoid this pitfall.”
Page 186
Costanza-Chock builds on this to explicate ten principles and objectives that form the basis of the design justice model, as follows:
Principle 1: We Use Design to Sustain, Heal, and Empower Our Communities, as Well as to Seek Liberation from Exploitative and Oppressive Systems
Principle 2: We Center the Voices of Those Who Are Directly Impacted by the Outcomes of the Design Process
Principle 3: We Prioritize Design’s Impact on the Community Over the Intentions of the Designer
Principle 4: We View Change as Emergent from an Accountable, Accessible, and Collaborative Process, Rather than as a Point at the End of a Process
Principle 5: We See the Role of the Designer as a Facilitator Rather than an Expert
Principle 6: We Believe that Everyone Is an Expert Based on Their Own Lived Experience and that We All Have Unique and Brilliant Contributions to Bring to a Design Process.
Principle 7: We Share Design Knowledge and Tools with Our Communities
Principle 8: We Work toward Sustainable, Community-Led, and Controlled Outcomes
Principle 9: We Work toward Nonexploitative Solutions that Reconnect Us to the Earth and to Each Other
Principle 10: Before Seeking New Design Solutions, We Look for What Is Already Working at the Community Level, and We Honor and Uplift Traditional, Indigenous, and Local Knowledge and Practices
The strength of this chapter lies in its structure and the extensive catalog of numerous instances and anecdotal teaching experiences that Dr. Costanza-Chock presents to support her propositions and observations. These examples are not limited to the acknowledgment of names of labs and organizations that have progressively brought, and continue to bring, positive changes to society.
Costanza-Chock succinctly and brilliantly covers the topic of design pedagogies, guiding readers through a persuasive discussion on design justice methods. She explores the application of interdisciplinary approaches in education and addresses the non-inclusive practices of Big Tech, offering potential solutions for moving forward.
The chapter is exceptionally well-written, cogent, and persuasive, offering invaluable insights into instructional design and pedagogy from the perspective of the philosophy of education. It emphasizes that education is not merely theoretical or a collection of facts to be learned; rather, it is a practical tool to help individuals contribute meaningfully to society. It aims to foster empathy, compassion, and inclusivity, encouraging learners to support marginalized communities.
For students of learning sciences, education, and instructional design, this chapter will prove to be both constructive and essential, offering significant applications of pedagogies that aim to improve and enhance modern education. Its interdisciplinary approach, integrating design, the humanities, and intersectional feminism, provides a comprehensive and impactful framework. Additionally, students across various academic disciplines will find it valuable due to its broad relevance and emphasis on interdisciplinarity. With a strong focus on design as a means to address systemic and structural inequalities, this chapter tackles unhealthy power dynamics, inequity, the digital divide, and the growing “digital gap.” It also sensitively addresses issues related to gender, race, class, disability, education, language, and other forms of structural inequality. From a sociological perspective, this chapter is vital, as it encourages learners to engage with community members beyond the classroom walls.
In conclusion, this chapter offers a compelling exploration of design justice pedagogies, emphasizing the importance of decolonizing and democratizing design education to address systemic inequalities. Dr. Costanza-Chock integrates various interdisciplinary approaches, drawing on real-world examples and theoretical frameworks to underscore the necessity of inclusive, participatory, and community-centered learning models. The chapter’s strength lies in its ability to connect pedagogy with action, providing readers—especially students and educators in the fields of design, technology, and social justice—with practical tools to challenge entrenched power structures. By focusing on the empowerment of marginalized communities and the role of education in fostering social change, Costanza-Chock not only enriches our understanding of the intersection between education and design but also invites us to critically engage with our responsibilities as learners and educators in shaping a more equitable future. However, while the chapter excels in presenting a wide range of pedagogical approaches and examples, it could have benefitted from more ‘in-depth’ discussion on the challenges of implementing these methodologies in diverse international educational contexts. The practical barriers—such as resistance from traditional institutions or limitations in resources—were only briefly touched upon. Additionally, more concrete global case studies or data illustrating the outcomes of design justice-based pedagogy in real-world classrooms could have strengthened the argument and offered clearer insights into its long-term impact. Nonetheless, the chapter remains an essential read for anyone interested in rethinking the future of education and design.
References
Costanza-Chock, Sasha. “Chapter 5-Design Pedagogies: ‘There’s Something Wrong with This System!’” Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, MIT Press, 2020.
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