What does CRT have to do with a roof?: critical race spatial praxis – an equity approach to institutional planning, college design, and campus space

Educational settings are an under-examined mechanism of social reproduction. “Hidden” in plain sight, college space is embedded with socializing messages that pass largely unacknowledged. So commonplace are the spatial arrangements of classrooms, cafeterias, bathrooms, and campuses that the ways spaces act to normalize social hierarchies and reproduce systems of power often escape critical scrutiny. In this study I examine how an integrated theoretical and praxis-oriented framework drawing upon the scholarship of the hidden curriculum, spatial theory, and critical race theory (CRT), serves as a means to reveal “invisible” mechanisms of socialization and open possibilities to disrupt their influence. Portland Community College (PCC) located in Portland, Oregon serves as a case study of how applied CRT in facilities planning and design can help to expose the ways in which educational settings reproduce dominant ideologies and, at the same time, how systemic and structural changes can advance racial equity. I employed two methodological approaches—ethnography and participatory action research (PAR)—and collected data over a period of nine months. Drawing on systematically documented, recorded, and transcribed interviews, observations, focus groups, meetings, and a student PAR project, I analyze institutional planning, campus design, and students’ experiences navigating college space. I argue CRT is well positioned to bridge the significant theory practice divide. In illustrating the strategic potential of CRT, I hope to encourage educators and campus leaders to apply CRT in the development of practical and transformative strategies to advance equity and inclusion, including changing the very architecture of education

HEBE: Highly Engaging eBook Experiences

Despite more and more books are made available in electronic format and technology is increasingly present in children’s everyday life, thus far the potential of the electronic book (eBook) medium has been only partially exploited. With the Highly Engaging eBook Experiences (HEBE) project we studied how to design and evaluate eBooks for children with the goal of making the reading experience more engaging. The project began with an investigation of the many facets that characterize the reading experience of children in order to understand how it could possibly be enhanced by electronic books. In a later stage an intergenerational design team used different techniques of Cooperative Inquiry to explore a range of design ideas. Then, based on those ideas, we developed a prototype of enhanced eBook and elaborated a shortlist of design recommendations that are intended to help designers in creating more engaging eBooks. The research project ended with a stage of evaluation where children’s User Experience with the eBook prototype was assessed. We took inspiration from Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory to define a benchmark for evaluating the reading experience. Then, by means of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), we investigated and collected data on the reading experience of two groups of children, one of which read an eBook enhanced following our design recommendations while the other read a basic version of the same eBook. Following a mixed-method approach, with quantitative analysis we verified whether participants who read the enhanced eBook had a better reading experience, while with qualitative analysis we tried to understand why. The results of the evaluation showed that that an eBook designed following our design recommendations may have a positive effect on children’s reading experience by making it more engaging

Visual Research in LIS: Complementary and Alternative Methods

Although visual methods are emerging as a valuable and versatile tool in qualitative social studies research, confusion around terminology, options, and best practices persists. Consequently, LIS scholars who wish to employ innovative visual approaches in their research face barriers to discovering and deciding which visual options best suit their goals. Based on a review of the literature, this article identifies and describes the scope of participatory and nonparticipatory visual methods currently in use in the social sciences, with particular attention paid to LIS contexts. While visual methods bring clear benefits to qualitative research in terms of data quality, modes of expression, and alternate perspectives, challenges remain, including logistic issues of implementing visual study designs and ethical considerations