Designing is Imagining: What Futures and Identities Do Activists With Developmental Disabilities Imagine When Designing For Learners With Developmental Disabilities?

Abstract

As learners engage in learning environments, they constantly co-develop ideas about who they are (their identities), and who they can become (their futures). Designers of learning activities make assumptions about what learner identities and imagined futures learners will ultimately take up. Learning activity designers with developmental disabilities who identify as activists may make assumptions about learners with developmental disabilities that other designers would not.  Working from a critical disability praxis orientation, the research was led by a person with a developmental disability. This study utilized a grounded theory approach to discourse analysis to analyze the design talk between two adult activists with developmental disabilities while they engaged in a co-design process to create a learning activity intended for learners with developmental disabilities who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). The activity was a game that explores inductive logic. Discourse was analyzed to understand what imagined futures and learner identities these activists assumed learners with developmental disabilities might take up. These activists imagined learners with developmental disabilities who use AAC as being inquisitive, interdependent, and ableism literate, and capable of achieving futures that were validating, inquisitive, accessible, and ableism-literate. These futures and identities suggest that future participatory design research with adults and youth with developmental disabilities might yield innovative curriculum designs.