Indigenous learning lab as prefigurative political action to dismantle settler-colonial system of exclusion

ABSTRACT

American Indian students continue to experience marginalization in settler-colonial school systems in the United States. American Indian students receive disciplinary punishment more frequently and harshly than white peers. Overrepresentation of American Indian students in school discipline is a byproduct of a long history of oppressive settler-colonial schooling. To address racial disproportionality in school discipline, the Indigenous Learning Lab was enacted through building a university-school-family-community partnership at a rural high school. Learning Lab is a community-driven problem-solving process through which multiple school stakeholders take transformative actions, including identification of systemic challenges entrenched in the settler-colonial school system and design of a new, culturally responsive support system. White administrators and teachers, along with students, family, and community members from the local tribal nation, engaged in prefigurative political action as they participated in the collective design process of the new system. Prefiguration is a present embodiment of new social relations, allowing participants to try new decision-making structures that may lead to what can be considered possible futures. The purpose of this paper is to examine how school stakeholders exerted their collective agency to unpack systemic contradictions in the settler-colonial school system and design a new culturally responsive support system.

KEYWORDS:

• Formative interventions
• learning lab
• prefiguration
• racial disproportionality in school discipline
• systemic transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This study used pseudonyms for the school, city, tribal community, and participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grand Challenges Grant, School of Education, The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Notes on contributors

Dosun Ko

Dosun Ko is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Wichita State University. His scholarship centers primarily on equity issues in special/inclusive education at the intersection of different social markers and community-driven participatory design research. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Race Ethnicity and Education, Remedial and Special Education, Teachers College Record, and Urban Education.

Aydin Bal

Aydin Bal is a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Dr. Bal's research focuses on the interplay between culture, learning, and mental health across local and global education systems. He examines the social justice issues in education, family-school-community-university collaboration, organizational innovation, and future making.

Aaron Bird Bear

Aaron Bird Bear (Diné/Three Affiliated) has served as the inaugural Director of Tribal Relations at the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison since 2020. Bird Bear came to UW–Madison in 2000 as the American Indian Student Academic Services coordinator and later served as an assistant dean for student diversity programs in the UW-Madison School of Education.

Linda Orie

Linda Orie is a Doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. Prior to joining UW, Linda taught middle school science and served as summer school principal at Menominee Tribal School. Linda is an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the single parent of three children: Orion, Vivian, and Darwin, to whom she endeavors to leave a legacy of life-long learning and academic excellence.

Dian Mawene

Dian Mawene is an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire. She studies multicultural (special) education, including issues such as racial disparities in school disciplinary practices and special education; school-family-community collaborations; and, intersections of race, class, space, and disability. She has published in reputable journals such as Remedial and Special Education, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, and Education Policy Analysis Archives.