Why Equity-Based Design Thinking is Key to Decolonising Education in Emergencies (EIE)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,”- James Baldwin.
“Youth Activism” by androosh is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
The politics of knowledge production and whose knowledge matters is at the heart of education. Speaking to EiE colleagues who studied Education and International Development at university, despite these degrees focusing on education in formerly colonized lands and settler-colonial nations, rarely did their reading lists reference racism, coloniality, critical education thinkers like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o or decolonial scholars like Franz Fanon. The post-colonial African leaders’ education initiatives like Nyerere’s Education for Self Reliance in Tanzania, Nkrumah’s Education plans in Ghana, and contemporary indigenous knowledge systems, like Southern Africa’s Ubuntu communitarian philosophy, were absent from syllabuses. From my own educational journey, it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to spend a year at the University of Havana with students from Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, Western Sahara Territories, Mexico, Bolivia, and Brazil (many of whom were recipients of scholarships) that I learned how biased and narrow my education and understanding of the world had been. I saw first-hand the long history of Cuban and South-South humanitarianism. I remember my Haitian roommate educating me about the Haitian revolution and how they had been paying a debt to France ever since for having the audacity to overthrow their enslavers. Humanitarian aid looks very different with this wider narrative.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche stresses, the danger of a single story is that ‘it robs people of dignity. There is no doubt that a limited lens of what constitutes knowledge contributes to perpetuating a certain way of thinking, doing, and understanding of the world. Therefore, it is more than disconcerting that these elite universities, situated in the Global North, where the majority of Education and International Development masters courses are taught (and position the next generation of practitioners and leaders), without an understanding of the power dynamics at play or that aid, education, and research have been ‘ complicit in slavery, colonialism, and racism, in ways that are more and less visible’ today (Tuhiwai- Smith, 1999). After all, what we learn is what we practice. Only through learning about these alternatives histories of Education and International Development we can ‘overturn colonial relationships of hierarchy, dispossession, exclusion, and subordination’ (Okech & Underhalter,2020).
As ‘decolonizing’ trends, it is so important that it is not forgotten why these conversations are taking place now. We are entertaining these conversations today in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the thousands of Black people subjected to police brutality, racially motivated violence, and anti-Blackness, which is rooted in legacies coloniality. Such was the extent of colonialism that George Floyd’s murder rippled across the globe to stand in solidarity and to challenge their own contextualized experiences of racism and oppression in over 60 countries on seven continents. Decolonial thinking, according to scholar-activists like Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Eve Tuck and K. Yang, stresses that ‘true’ decolonization must be linked to direct action to interrogate and transform institutional, structural, and epistemological legacies of colonisation. And this will not happen overnight; as Linda Tuhiwai Smith outlines, we must ‘acknowledge that decoloniality is a long-term and multifaceted process involving the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial power’( Tuhiwai-Smith, 2010: 33).
Whilst there are valid critiques of ‘decolonialisation’ and the way aid agencies have co-opted the term, ever the optimist, I believe that as a concept, it does push open long overdue conversations, which will hopefully lead to change. Education and academia/research have contentious histories under colonial empires, but both have also contributed towards anti-racism, social justice, and activism. It is time for the education and international development/EiE sector, particularly agencies and practitioners sat in positions of power, to reflect where and how their practices are maintaining hierarchies of power, which the colonial past may in part influence.
‘Decolonisation ’ as a process towards Equity-based Education
If standard EiE responses were designed from an equitable base, they would be decolonial by default.
In education, equity work is grounded in an examination of how policies, practices, and structures operate with factors such as country of origin, language, age, ethnicity, race, gender, parenthood, sexual orientation, migration status, class, and dis/abilities to limit or leverage access to learn. If the sector doesn’t ‘see’ these hyperlocal tensions and community assets, they cannot address inequity or recognize the diverse needs, capabilities, and support networks diversity brings.
Take, for example, the problematic equity oversight in Education and International Development around the focus and framing of the ‘global learning crisis, which perpetuates this idea that learning doesn’t take place outside of the classroom, at worst, devaluing the local skills, knowledge, and competencies that children learn in and from their communities and/or spiritual practices. This deficit narrative diminishes what Tara Yosso labels community cultural wealth and echoes Mignalo calls the ‘Colonial matrix of power’. To me, the greater learning crisis is that nobody in positions of power seems to be listening. Actively embedding equity from conception to completion ‘would undoubtedly lead to a different response to complex problems such as the global ‘learning crisis. However, for this to happen, it is not enough to diversify the curriculum. Instead, those most affected by the crises must have a prominent role in the design phase.
As a practitioner, I am interested in putting theory into practice. While multilateral reform and changing the current humanitarian financing models are ultimately needed for systemic change, every agency could adjust how it develops programmes- and this small change can transform aid. Designing and delivering aid programs is a core function of the majority of humanitarian organizations. Therefore it is in the process that EiE needs to revisit to begin its equity-based, decolonial journey.
Embedding Equity in the Programme Design Cycle
Firstly, the humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) shapes the process of most interventions. Whilst projects start with needs assessments; this is often the only point of consultation with affected populations in the project design. With that data, programmes are developed, but what if the analysis of the situation is wrong? This is similar to criticism of traditional design thinking practices, where Hill, Molitor, and Ortiz note that ‘while engaging with end-users, many forms of design thinking still see the designer as separate from the user and grant the designer the power in the relationship — the power to decide with whom to do empathy work, the power to interpret the results, the power to decide the framing of the problem, and the power to pick the best solution.’
Colonial hierarchies of knowledge determine who gets to be a ‘designer’ or an ‘expert’ in humanitarian contexts. Wale Ofisun considers that “the intersection between race, gender, social class, and the passport you hold determines how you are valued in the sector and whether your ideas will be taken seriously or not”. Because of the unequal power dynamics that shape INGOs, the UN, and local actors, implementing partners often have limited scope to be included in all phases of the project design, negotiate budgets, and provide critical feedback on the implementing agency’s role in the project. These power imbalances ‘can lead to misunderstandings, to feelings of being treated unfairly, to frictions and lack of trust’.Even the term ‘expert’ carries the unstated assumptions that these are two separate groups, their roles and responsibilities, and assumptions about capabilities. And this is where education inequity begins because whilst EIE actors are trying to design inclusive programmes, the right people aren’t always in the room, which is particularly detrimental in contexts where there are resistance and suspicion towards ‘outside’ education systems. Community involvement in EiE responses isn’t anything new — the INEE Minimum Standard 1 on Community Participation outlines that communities should be included throughout the programme cycle. If all EiE responses applied this standard, they would by default disrupt the colonial legacies of aid work, challenging assumptions of whose knowledge really matters, and embrace ‘possibilities of other modes of being, thinking, knowing, sensing and living’ (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018:18). We need to start seeing the ‘process as product’.
Equity-based design thinking offers an approach to do just that. One particular framework, EquityXDesign seeks to challenge the notion of expertise by using a practice that merges the consciousness of racial equity work with the methodology of design thinking. As a result, EquityXDesign illuminates racism and inequity — individual, structural, and institutional — that exists in the individuals involved in the design team (and potentially shapes the way problems are framed and solutions are proposed).
In education, equity means every learner and teacher receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential. Equity-based design thinking involves inclusion from the very onset of programmatic design, which would mean co-designing the types of changes they dream for learners and teachers by leveraging expertise from within, among the children, families, teachers, and school leaders in their communities. (IDEO, 2020)
This approach contrasts with the status-quo of last-minute rapid needs assessments, often tokenistic to fulfil donor compliance, that can shape many education and international development initial design phases.
Applying Equity X Design’s principles to an EiE response.
Design at the Margins
Firstly, if education responses are designed at the Margins, they would leave no one behind. The equity-based design calls on practitioners to ask:
- Who is present at each stage of the project, and why?
- Who gets a say in how a problem is framed, or if it’s even a problem in the first place?
- Do those impacted get a say in decision-making, or if not, what other ways can you share power with them?
- Education actors need to position those at the margins as leaders in the design process and experts in their experience, which means making sure people with disabilities, ethnic/language and other minority groups, gender considerations, etc. must be involved in throughout the programme cycle and determine what key indicators of success.
Start with Self
All programme designers, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, and other intersectional markers, must be aware of individual biases and levers of privileges that enable us to see or not see things. Equity-based thinking calls for all people engaged in programme design to :
- Self-reflect on how they ended up in that position.
- Self-reflect on their positionality (relative to privilege and/or oppression) in all aspects of their identities (e.g., race, class, gender, nationality, caste, religion, language, dis/ability) and how levers of privilege can dominate design processes.
- Ask if the people in the project design team really know the important customs and practices in teachers, students, and community members’ education experiences? (and how do these practices work together to include or exclude?)
Ceding power
Equity-based design thinking advocates that those at the margins should hold the most power in the design process. But, of course, ceding power doesn’t necessarily exclude anyone who isn’t directly impacted by the problem. Still, it calls for aid to radically rethink ‘expert’ roles, recognise the ‘process as product’, ceding power where necessary, and listening. For EiE, this could mean:
- Setting measurable and time-bound commitments in 2021 to shift the power in global governance structures. All inter-agency working groups, EiE hubs, and global high-level panels should have diverse representation, institutions, and leadership, predominantly from crisis-affected contexts.
- Reflect on who is setting advocacy agendas, how are national, regional, and global level policymakers and practitioners involved in setting priorities, and how are crises affected populations framed or ‘othered’ by these calls?
- Establish strategic advisory groups (or local community engagement traditions) comprised of different national and hyperlocal stakeholders in all responses and ensure that they have critical roles in inputting, reviewing, monitoring, and challenging EiE programmes.
- Diversify funding and resource mobilization by engaging with horizontal networks, diaspora communities, and national and regional philanthropy initiatives.
Making the invisible visible
Factors such as type of emergency, being on the move, country of origin, disability, language, age, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, parenthood intersect with gender and age to influence education experiences in emergencies. To ensure EIE programmes are radically inclusive and address those who are most at risk of falling through the cracks, consider:
- Are there voices, histories, forms of expression, and forms of knowledge absent or silenced in the EiE response? Why are they silenced, and how can they be enabled to speak?
- Reflect on what languages are used throughout the programme design cycle, cluster coordination meetings, online high-level events, webinars, and adjust (and budget) to enable all to participate meaningfully.
- Reflect and reframe what is meant by ‘implementing partner’. For example, is there co-creation, acknowledgement of distinct roles, and dialogue around fair remuneration and budgets?
- Is there any visibility of national partners, community-led organizations, or programs in the ‘lead agency's social media, advocacy, and communication, and if not, why?
Speaking to the Future
- Set up an inter-agency task team to address inequity in the sector- there is one for just about every other EiE sub-thematic. Still, there is silence and inertia when it comes to racism and decolonizing structures.
- Advocate for the changes that communities want today. This could mean tackling the issue of ‘incentives’ globally, challenging donors who resist funding post-primary education projects with evidence of what works or investing in initiatives like adolescent teacher traineeships to address female teacher shortages.
- Shift away from single-sector, agency-specific, and short-term solutions, recognizing that crises are multi-layered and systemic, and sustainable education programmes will need multi-sector responses.
- Collaborate and co-design research, programmes, and traineeships with universities and teacher training colleges in crisis-affected contexts (and don’t automatically assume that they need capacity building). This is where the next generation of EiE global leadership needs to come from.
Concluding thoughts
I once visited a refugee camp in Ethiopia where an organization had received a huge amount of funding to develop an Early Childhood Development programme in several refugee camps. Instead of building community-based tukul structures near community blocks, the organization went for corrugated iron structures, cheaper and quicker to put up. However, as temperatures soared to 45 degrees +, the structures were unusable after 10 am. In addition, families, already with reservations about the type of education their children would receive, did not want their young infants to cross the camp during the day.
How different would this programme have been if it had been designed equitably, with a wider range of stakeholders? For a start, it would be a lot more sustainable if there had been investment and resources allocated to involving community members from the get-go in the programme design because almost 20 years from the initial displacement, the camp is still there, and organizations continue to design responses on behalf of the population.
Every EiE programme includes parents and teachers associations, child rights clubs, and back-to-school outreach/community mobilizers. These people need to be in the design room and throughout the programme cycle because the cost of their exclusion is immeasurable. By no means are the suggestions or even the equity-based design framework exhaustive, but instead, I want this blog to be an invitation for practical, tangible action that practitioners to go away, reflect upon, discuss, challenge, and start thinking about how they can address inequity and how it shows up in their work. I invite practitioners to share their thoughts and suggestions here as it is only through a willingness for change by the current ‘gatekeepers’ will there be systemic change.
Finally, 2020 was a year of bold statements, black squares, and commitments to the future aid sector that would radically rethink and address the prevalence of racism, power imbalances, and inequity. Decoloniality is anti-racism in action, and because of its commitment to radical inclusion, it benefits everyone. If this sector is serious about equity, it needs to get to grips (and work) with decolonizing its practice.
Further reading/links to online courses/podcasts:
Check out 228 Accelerator; their work is rooted in the equityXdesign process. They offer a wide range of courses for organizations interested in deepening their learning around equity X design https://www.228accelerator.com/learning-studio
Check out Equity Meet Design; they offer several programmes, including a free online course.https://courses.equitymeetsdesign.com/p/introduction-to-equityxdesign1
The Equity Lab https://www.theequitylab.org/about
Check out the University of Bristol’s Decolonising Education Future Learn course: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/decolonising-education-from-theory-to-practice
Check out the University of Cambridge and Seoul National University Decolonising EiE reading group
Check out ‘ Rethinking Humanitarianism’ podcast for discussions on decolonizing aid, multilateral reform, and localisation: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/podcast
If you have any thoughts, critical feedback, or interest in learning more about my research, please drop me an email at j.oddy@uel.ac.uk. Alternatively, please participate in an anonymized survey to share your views on adolescent programming and colonial legacies in aid:
English: https://forms.gle/VkU9iep8sNF2qMEy9
French: https://forms.gle/Pugvadx1Ua7T7b9A7
Espanol:https://forms.gle/kzbnKMZDpWHCwTpa6
To cite this blog:
Oddy, Jessica. “Why Equity-Based Thinking is Key to Decolonising Education in Emergencies ”, 3rd of February 2021, URL https://medium.com/@jlojlo/why-equity-based-design-thinking-is-key-to-decolonising-education-in-emergencies-82cb5b2ebea
About the author
Jess has spent the past decade working in the field of EiE. She is a PhD candidate at the University of East London. Her research focuses on diverse young people’s intersectional education experiences in emergencies and whether contemporary practices of Education in Emergencies reinforce colonial legacies.
