Designing for Joy: Constructing Equity Trails in Fandom-Centered Classrooms

ABSTRACT

This article traces how multiple equity-focused goals were negotiated in collectively designing a classroom that centered joyful fandom literacy practices, considering how teacher-researchers and youth use expanded conceptions of equity trails in a social design experiment to reset harmful but normalized classroom, disciplinary, and fandom practices. Using methods of collaboratively aligning equity-focused questions, subsequent instructional designs, and the perception of consequences by various participants to audit the commitment to equity across the design, action, analysis, and reflection, the findings follow the consequences of design choices as conceptualized by both teacher-researchers and focal BIPOC youth. We found that some equity trails—particularly ones that privileged shorter timespans linked with institutional assessments—conflicted with equity trails restructuring larger ecological systems aiming to transform fandoms or disciplines. We suggest that design researchers must center conceptions of power when telling research stories making visible the various and divergent ways participants chase after equity together.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by a grant from the International Literacy Association. The Authors acknowledge Dr. Sarah Beck, Dr. Jasmine Ma, Dr. David Kirkland, Dr. Jayne Lammers, and Dr. Nicole Mirra for their support reading preliminary drafts of this work.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karis Jones

Karis Jones is an assistant professor of English Language Arts Education at SUNY Empire State College where she studies learning and literacies across fandom and gaming spaces with a focus on community design for social justice goals.

Scott Storm

Scott Storm is a former English teacher and department chair at an urban public school. He recently earned his PhD in English education from New York University and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at Bowdoin College. Scott studies critical literacies, adolescents' aesthetic literacies, and social justice education.