Expanding Educational Research and Interventionist Methodologies

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.