Transformative Praxis: A Critical Design Framework for Belonging and Inclusion in Technology-Rich Learning Spaces

Abstract

Drawing on transformative, critical, and culturally responsive and sustaining traditions of pedagogy and instructional design, we present a technology-focused framework for decentering normative forces along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, language, religion, ability, sex, and gender in online higher education learning spaces that honors each participant for who they are with respect to their identity markers and their intersectional community memberships to promote inclusion and belonging. These normative forces—which simultaneously crowd out and make hypervisible diverse identities—predispose the ends and processes of teaching and learning and structure the nature of academic disciplines. This is particularly apparent online where engagement is decoupled from traditional anchors of relationships and influenced by difference-blind neoliberal perspectives. In response, we provide a framework for inclusion and belonging along two vectors. The first vector is a critical design process inspired by backward design principles: inquiring, translating, activating, and reflecting. The second is a set of inclusive considerations grounded in culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy and the Universal Design for Learning framework: asset-based frames, authentic multiple modes, and mixed mirrors and windows. This process includes an opportunity to interrogate the role of technology as a mediator of learning and teaching for belonging. We further assert that the instructor also needs to engage in identity work to interrogate their positionality in online environments with respect to not only observable and cultural identity markers but also academic disciplinary identity. To illustrate our framework, we provide reflections on the design and enactment of online and technology-rich activity structures that promote inclusion and belonging.