Co-design Partners as Transformative Learners: Imagining Ideal Technology for Schools by Centering Speculative Relationships

Title of the Paper

Co-design Partners as Transformative Learners: Imagining Ideal Technology for Schools by Centering Speculative Relationships

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Educational technology design, social justice, participatory/speculative design
• Keywords: Educational technology, artificial intelligence, collaborative learning, social justice, participatory design, speculative design, student agency, technology evaluation, school architecture

Research Background and Problems

• Issues and Challenges:

  • Structural inequities have long existed in the U.S. public school system, leading to the neglect of learning experiences and agency for historically marginalized youth students.
  • Emerging educational technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence) are proposed to address inequities but often unintentionally reinforce existing hierarchies.
  • Designing student-centered co-design spaces requires challenging traditional institutional structures and social relationships, necessitating a redefinition of the boundaries of technology and collaboration.

• Significance:

  • Traditional educational designs, curricula, and tools often focus on technology itself while neglecting the identity development and agency of students, especially marginalized students.
  • Enhancing students' collaboration and innovation capabilities in education can be a critical driver of educational equity.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Current participatory design efforts often focus on the development of tangible design outcomes (e.g., curricula, technological tools) while overlooking the identity development and social positioning of design partners.
  • A co-design approach that emphasizes "relationship building" and "transformative agency" is proposed to support students in redefining and constructing ideal educational institutions.

Solution

• Proposed Methods and Solutions:

  • A new speculative participatory design approach is introduced, focusing the design space on historically marginalized youth students to support their development of "transformative agency" and reshape the future of school technology and collaboration.
  • The importance of prioritizing "relationships" within the design space is clarified, suggesting that technological tools (e.g., artificial intelligence) can emerge as byproducts of these reconstructed relationships.

• Innovations:

  • The "perceptual bridge" method is proposed: exposing students to alternative institutional models with explicit social agency relationships (e.g., cooperative housing) to help them create speculative worlds.
  • Balancing "identity development (sociality)" and "object development (instrumentality)" while deferring the focus on technological feasibility to encourage bolder imagination among design partners.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  • A three-step collaborative design process was developed:
    1. Create speculative worlds of ideal collaboration, incorporating social perceptual bridges (e.g., inspiration from cooperative housing).
    2. Invite technology experts to evaluate and validate the technical feasibility of speculative tools (e.g., potential implementation in artificial intelligence).
    3. Reintroduce speculative tools and frameworks into existing school contexts, inspiring students to transition from the present to speculative futures.
  • Artificial intelligence cases (e.g., crime prediction models) and educational scenarios (classrooms and administration) were used to inspire students to speculate on possible technological tools.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:

  • Students designed emerging collaborative technologies such as the "Live, Love, Light (LLL)" device and "Dreamcatcher," representing core needs of their ideal schools, including safety, supportive collaboration, and student voice.
  • Using the historical activity theory framework, the study demonstrated four key stages of students developing "transformative agency": double bind identification, breaking social order, experimental cycles, and expansion of activity goals.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions and Advantages:

  • The proposed design outputs (e.g., LLL) are not limited to traditional school technologies focused on content learning or skill assessment but creatively address enhancing students' sociality, sense of security, and collaborative agency.
  • The approach transcends conventional educational technology design paradigms (e.g., single-user content interaction) by introducing new tools centered on collective collaboration and social values.

• Experimental and Evaluation Results:

  • In the implementation study, students clearly recognized the gap between their identities and social relationships within schools through the "perceptual bridge" method inspired by cooperative housing, and transplanted and reconstructed these relationships in speculative designs.
  • Speculative tools and social systems were tentatively connected to students' current school lives, inspiring more immediate school transformation plans.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • The multi-stage timeline and complex design inputs required may limit the scalability of the approach, particularly for rapid iteration in practical design needs.
  • Unresolved methodological questions include:
    1. How to provide alternative "perceptual bridges" when cooperative institutions are unavailable?
    2. How to broadly introduce this approach into non-educational institutions and larger societal contexts?
    3. How to further refine the practical pathways from "ideal worlds" to implementation-based transformation?

Conclusion

This study proposes an innovative collaborative design paradigm that supports educational equity through student-centered speculative design. By adopting a cross-temporal and cross-social-context design process, the research makes new progress in enhancing students' identity recognition and agency. Future studies are recommended to explore more precise balances and practical applications between technological and social needs.