This report takes up a critical issue in education: the continuing reproduction of educational in... more This report takes up a critical issue in education: the continuing reproduction of educational inequality in relation to race and social class. In doing so, it highlights several key issues in how we study and attempt to ameliorate disparities through educational policy. We conclude with a set of recommendations for policymakers and advocates. Educational policy interventions can improve educational opportunity: è Craft and invest in policies that acknowledge and address the impact of economic, racial, and social forces on students and schools è Ensure schools and educational reforms are sufficiently and equitably funded è Utilize rigorous, systematic and ecologically valid research from various sources and methodological approaches to develop policies and to evaluate their impact and implementation è Enable the development of equitable, robust environments through professional development è Re-frame the research focus to capture the varied, rich, and consequential practices of non-dominant communities to build equitable, evidence-based policy è Educational policy perpetuates inequity through fiscal disinvestment, a neglect of the broad sociopolitical structure, the application of universal interventions, and the usage of a narrow research base Growing inequality, re-segregation, and structural racism pose fundamental challenges to America's schools and its ideals of democracy and equity. Educational policy perpetuates inequity through fiscal disinvestment, a neglect of the broad sociopolitical structure, the application of universal interventions, and the usage of a narrow research base. Educational policy can mitigate educational inequities. Local practices undermine educational equity by limiting student access to robust learning environments through segregation and tracking practices. Racial biases held by teachers and leaders are enacted in classrooms and can impair deep learning and engagement for all students. Key Findings historical moment calls for more robust, equityoriented, and race-sensitive policies that recognize the multiple and complex factors impacting students and communities. This policy brief reviews recent scholarship by members of the Race, Diversity, and Educational Policy Cluster of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley to advance a broader and more complex understanding of the persistent failure of U.S.
The projects in this interactive poster symposium explore ways of engaging learners with social j... more The projects in this interactive poster symposium explore ways of engaging learners with social justice issues through the design and study of data literacy interventions. These interventions span classroom to museum contexts, and environmental to social sciences domains. Together, they illustrate research and practice approaches for engaging learners with data to promote emancipatory activity.
This NSF-funded workshop is designed to support early career and doctoral students in STEM resear... more This NSF-funded workshop is designed to support early career and doctoral students in STEM research to work with district and school leaders, formal and informal educators, and community coalitions in order to build and sustain research-practice partnerships to improve STEM education. Workshop Leaders Bronwyn Bevan, Exploratorium, Director of the Institute for Research and Learning Andrew Shouse, University of Washington, Director of the Institute for Science & Math Education Mentors Kris Gutiérrez, Professor, University of Colorado Boulder Tricia Harding, Synergies Project Community Organizer Ben Kirshner, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder Matt Krehbiel, Kansas State Department of Education Focus of the Workshop This workshop is designed to support a community of STEM researchers, district and school leaders, formal and informal educators, and community coalitions engaged in building and sustaining research-practice partnerships to improve STEM education. Research...
This chapter examines major lines of inquiry in mathematics education through the prism of cultur... more This chapter examines major lines of inquiry in mathematics education through the prism of cultural historical activity theory, focusing on the language and discursive practices in the teaching and learning of school mathematics. We make an analytic distinction between the language in and of mathematics learning in classrooms, noting the pitfalls of dichotomizing the language of the classroom and the language in mathematical learning or ignoring their interrelations. Specifically, we reviewed work that framed the role of everyday discourse practices as supporting the development of scientific discourse practices. In line with several mathematics education scholars, we challenge this framing by revisiting the theoretical principles from the work of Vygotsky, Engestrom, and Cole, among others, to show how scientific or school-based mathematical learning “grows down into” the everyday, and
T his chapter is a call for consequential education research that has transformative potential: i... more T his chapter is a call for consequential education research that has transformative potential: intellectually, educationally, and socially. It is about learning to see differently. It is an argument about seeing our work with youth and communities in ways that can help education researchers see ingenuity instead of ineptness and inability, to see resilience instead of deficit, and to imagine futures with youth from nondominant communities instead of imposing failure. We use the notion of "learning to see" both metaphorically and as a theoretical lens and methodological guide to illustrate how rigorous and consequential education research can help us imagine and design new forms of learning and schooling. We argue that rupturing educational inequality also involves new forms of inquiry that help reconceptualize what it means to work with nondominant communities. 687523R REXXX10.3102/0091732X16687523Review of Research in EducationGutiérrez et al.: Replacing Representation With Imagination
Learning as Movement in Social Design-Based Experiments: Play as a Leading Activity
Human Development, 2019
This article addresses an approach to design-based research informed by cultural historical activ... more This article addresses an approach to design-based research informed by cultural historical activity theory and ecological approaches to inquiry in which historicity, prolepsis, remediation, diversity and equity, transformability, resilience, and sustainability are organizing design principles. Social design-based experiments seek to co-design learning ecologies in which learning is made equitable and consequential for youth from nondominant communities. In this article, we focus on the ways the design of El Pueblo Mágico, an after-school STEAM-oriented 5th Dimension program, involved saturating the environment with new tools and forms of assistance and privileged intergenerational learning to engage youth and their university amigxs in new technology-mediated practices. In particular, we examine how designing around the leading activity of play opened up opportunities for youth to engage in consequential forms of learning across El Pueblo Mágico and home practices, as well as how d...
Drawing upon four years of research within a social design experiment, we focus on how teacher le... more Drawing upon four years of research within a social design experiment, we focus on how teacher learning can be supported in designed environments that are organized around robust views of learning, culture, and equity. We illustrate both the possibility and difficulty of helping teachers disrupt the default teaching scripts that privilege traditional forms of participation, support, and hierarchal relations, as well as disrupt static and reductive notions of culture. In doing so, we hope to make visible the complexities of leveraging cultural repertoires of practice within a designed learning environment in which novice teachers work to negotiate both common sense and normative conceptualizations of learning and culture.
In this article, we advance an approach to design research that is organized around a commitment ... more In this article, we advance an approach to design research that is organized around a commitment to transforming the educational and social circumstances of members of non-dominant communities as a means of promoting social equity and learning. We refer to this approach as social design experimentation. The goals of social design experiments include the traditional aim of design experiments to create theoreticallygrounded and practical educational interventions, the social agenda of ameliorating and redressing historical injustices, and the development of theories focused on the organization of equitable learning opportunities. To illustrate how we use social design methodology, we present two examples that strategically reorganized the sociohistorical practices of communities to expand learning as a key goal. We conclude with a discussion of the opportunities this approach creates for learning scientists to form effective research partnerships with community members, as well as the responsibilities it entails for creating a more just society. It seems to me that American researchers are constantly seeking to explain how the child came to be what he is; we in the USSR are striving to discover not how the child came to be what he is, but how he can become what he not yet is.-A. N. Leontiev (cited in Cole, 1979, p. 151
Expanding Educational Research and Interventionist Methodologies
Cognition and Instruction, 2016
ABSTRACT This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, e... more ABSTRACT This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, engage an important and much needed conversation in design-based approaches to inquiry: that is, what does it mean to do work in and with nondominant communities? Drawing on cultural historical activity theory, decolonizing methodologies, and indigenous perspectives, these articles seek to advance participatory design research as a means to foreground the development of socially just systems with equitable forms of teaching and learning. Specifically, the “social change making” projects exemplified reflect a generational and hybrid shift in design approaches, incorporating political and innovative dimensions of other methods with shared aims. A notable focus of participatory design research is that design and interventions are understood and addressed as part of everyday activity. In this way, change making projects are conceptualized from within the practices and commitments, and histories of communities. These new sensibilities about working with nondominant communities necessarily involve rethinking and explicitly redesigning the research and participants. subject positions across all aspects of the intervention. Finally, these emergent participatory design research projects argue that issues of race, equity, and inequality are neither sufficiently theorized or addressed by other theoretical approaches, including cultural activity theoretical approaches.
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Papers by Kris Gutierrez