SDEs are an approach to DBR that is created with a new “social imagination” [Guti´errez, 2016, p. 188]. SDEs are utilized to create change in inequitable systems in order to reorganize structures to support non-dominant communities. This methodol- ogy allows researchers to simultaneously create change and study it [Guti´errez, 2016]. SDEs are informed by interventionist DBR (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003), formative experiments [Engestr¨om, 2008], learning theories from CHAT and views of equity [Guti´errez, 2016].
Formative experiments and DBR are methodologies often employed in educational research and are utilized to study phenomena in authentic learning environments.
These research methodologies were developed as an extension to conventional lab- oratory experiments, where researchers study phenomenon in non-contextual ways [Reinking and Bradley, 2008]. From a sociocultural and CHAT perspective, learning occurs as individuals interact with one another and their world, mediated through their cultural artifacts. Therefore, DBR and formative experiments were developed to design educational interventions that accomplish a particular goal in authentic settings, such as within a classroom [Reimann, 2011]. SDEs belong to the same class of methodologies that aim to explore and analyze teaching and learning while taking into consideration the contexts of development.
The characteristic feature of these forms of methodology that remains in SDEs is the continuous modification of the intervention formatively during its implementation in response to observations made and data collected. SDEs, like DBR and formative experiments, are iteratively implemented, where cycles of reflection, refinement, and repair occur over the course of the experiment [Guti´errez, 2016, Reimann, 2011]. However, SDEs differ from design and formative research due to their explicit focus on historicity and equity. Through SDEs, researchers engage in an interventionist way in non-dominant communities to empower the stakeholders involved and develop a historical perspective, thereby understanding the social, cultural, and historical influences in their learning. This enables the stakeholders involved to tackle and challenge the inequities they encounter and transform into “learners and agents of social change” [Guti´errez, 2016, p. 192].
Equity and historicity are at the heart of social design of learning environments and interventions. Guti´errez [Guti´errez, 2016] provides key features that characterize this methodology: (1) attention to history, (2) focus on re-organizing the activity or
system rather than the individual, (3) utilization of dynamic models of culture, (4) emphasis on equity, and (5) emphasis on sustainable transformation.
The goal of an SDE is to develop “historical actors” [Guti´errez, 2016] who learn to perceive events and actions from a historical perspective. From this perspective, one comes to understand how particular cultural practices came into being and how they enhance or limit opportunities for learning [Guti´errez, 2008]. Within this study, the researcher and teacher constantly explored issues of schooling and science instruction from a historical perspective during the teacher support sessions in order to under- stand the need to transform current science instructional practices and view students from non-deficit perspectives, focusing on their histories of engagement in different practices in their everyday life. We also attempted to include a historical perspective in the lessons we created, co-designed by the teacher and researcher with student input, in order to help students understand the effects of nuclear energy and the practices of the scientific community. Finally, this study was designed after conduct- ing a literature review in order to understand the historical background of science education and teacher education when developing the SDE.
Another essential aspect of the SDE is the focus on the reorganization of the ac- tivity rather than the participants. Utilizing a cultural-historical perspective, the SDE creates opportunities to participate in alternate and multiple ways that enable expansive learning within individuals. Here “design” is seen as a “re- mediating activ- ity”—deliberately changing the instruction and redesigning the learning environment to create opportunities for individuals to engage in robust learning [Guti´errez et al., 2009, Guti´errez and Vossoughi, 2010]. Re-mediation, therefore, is seen in a new light: not in a deficit manner as “remedial learning” to “fix” the student, but rather as a
way of changing the learning environment into a place where all students can expand their repertoires of practice and challenge existing inequitable practices and norms [Guti´errez and Vossoughi, 2010]. This study aimed to support non-dominant students and the teacher of color by focusing on science instructional practices and curricu- lum that leverage their strengths and utilize their experience to make meaningful connections rather than on practices designed to “fix their inadequacies.”
SDEs are created to help educators move away from deficit notions of students’ identities and cultures. Just as re-mediation is reframed to view students in non- deficit ways, within SDEs, educators and researchers employ dynamic models of cul- ture instead of fixed and deficit notions. In SDEs, culture is not seen as a set of fixed characteristics that reside within an individual [Guti´errez and Rogoff, 2003]. Instead, culture is a social inheritance that comprises a set of artifacts, both symbolic, such as language and oral practices, and material, such as literature and clothes. These arti- facts are created as individuals come together to transform their environment through their participation in activities that fulfill the collective need. Culture becomes the mediator through which we interact with others and our non-human environment [Cole and Engestr¨om, 1993].
From this perspective, cultural characteristics of individuals are seen through the lens of historical engagement in practices. Cultural differences are variations in peo- ple’s engagement in everyday practice [Moll, 2000]. This shifts the focus from deficit notions of right or wrong ways of learning to the cultural repertoires of practice stu- dents utilize to engage in the activities. The teacher and researcher utilized this view of culture to develop lessons that could be used to leverage students’ strengths rather than focus on their weaknesses. The researcher also utilized this strengths-based view
to analyze the teacher’s development of practice.
As stated earlier, what distinguishes SDEs from other methodologies is its explicit focus on equity. For the SDE, the first question we must ask is “How is equity accounted for across the inquiry project? Is it locally defined and experienced?” [Guti´errez and Vossoughi, 2010, p. 103]. This study was designed because the teacher and researcher both desired to enact more equitable practices within the classroom and the study. The researcher, building from literature and co-constructing with the teacher, created notions of equity in science education as instructional practice that place students’ lives and their motivations as the center of teaching and learning. In order to continue focusing on aspects of equity that support non-dominant groups, the researcher collaborated with the teacher and students to bring in their voices to the purpose and design of the lessons. The teacher was involved in the setting the goals, designing artifacts and lessons, implementing these artifacts, and modifying the artifacts.
The collaboration in the SDE transforms all the stakeholders involved, including the researcher. This transformation involves a change in the learning environment through change in the “methods, tools and dispositions, as well as the relations with participants in the focal activity” [Guti´errez and Vossoughi, 2010, p. 102]. Related to re- mediation of activity, transformability is a characteristic of SDEs where new systems of practice are created when the current system is unsustainable [Walker and Salt, 2006].
4.2.1
Case Study of an SDE
Stake [Stake, 2005] states that a case study is “not a methodological choice but a choice of what is to be studied” (p. 443). The methodology chosen in this study is the SDE. However, due to the scope of this study and the choice of what is studied here, I embedded a case study design within the SDE. The first step in a case study is the identification and binding of a case, which is to define what the case is. A case is viewed as a social object existing in reality with defined boundaries [Schwandt and Gates, 2017] and can represent anything: a person, an event, a location, or even a country. In this study, I focus on the practices and reflection of a single teacher as we both engage in an SDE to design equitable chemistry instructional units. The SDE was a smaller space created separate from but within the main semester system of the school and classroom. The focus of a case study is about understanding all the nuances present within that particular case. Therefore, my research questions and analysis concentrate on understanding the complex process of learning of a single teacher and his development of practice to understand and provide insight into the process.