Designing for Equity: Learning Environments

Designing for Equity: Learning Environments is one course in GOA’s Designing for Equity series. Each course in this series focuses on intentionally disrupting inequities in order to design for equity within a specific aspect of educator practice.

We invite you to join us as we work through modules focused on Self, Equitable Design, Facilitation, and Community, all in the interest of designing learning environments that cultivate and foster belonging.

This is an asynchronous learning experience. Through support and challenge, let’s learn and grow together.

This course offers an opportunity to commit to a more equitable educator practice alongside a global community of educators. This course is designed for PreK-12 educators, with curated examples that represent a variety of experiences and roles. We encourage you to engage with these varied perspectives and adapt and transfer what you can to your own specific context.

This course builds from the premise set forth in our Designing for Equity course; we must start by disrupting neutrality. (Previous participation in Designing for Equity is not required. Anyone is welcome to join this course.) In this course, we will adopt and design proactive, real-time, and responsive strategies to promote and foster belonging in our learning environments through a focus on Self, Equitable Design, Facilitation, and Community.

Within each module, you will reflect on research and lived experiences to set an intention before engaging in design challenges to concretely enact this intention into practice. Each day, participants will choose from two design challenges that are intended to support and challenge participants towards responsibly designing, facilitating, and fostering equitable learning environments by translating intention into concrete action. You’ll leave with practical applications and ongoing considerations to influence your practice going forward.

This fall, GOA is offering three courses that take a deeper dive into course modules explored in Designing for Equity. Through a Disrupt and Design framework, these courses focus on identifying and disrupting the impact of systemic inequities in our classrooms and practice in order to more intentionally design for equity. Each course will focus on equitably designing specific aspects of our classroom practice and pedagogy, including:

• Learning Environments

• Assessment

• Content

These courses prioritize purposeful reflection, intention, and action. Participants will explore data and stories that highlight rationales, strategies, and impact before engaging in design challenges that seek to translate intention into concrete action.

We invite you to join a global network of educators in these learning experiences. Each course will include an optional synchronous call for extended conversation, continued collaboration, or communal design time. Through support and challenge, let’s learn and grow together.