What is a Design Studio?

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The purpose of the Immersive Design Studio is to plan culturally responsive learning experiences that have the potential for closing Equity gaps. Equity in education is the policy and practice directive to provide quality and effective learning opportunities so that background and identity are neither correlative nor predictive of student performance and/or achievement outcomes. The Design Studio is a space where we work at the intersections of Equity and pedagogy in order to practice planning habits so that we engage our students in rigorous and meaningful opportunities to learn. Culturally Responsive Education is the work that lives in the overlap of Equity and pedagogy.

Planning for culturally responsive learning experiences is something more than an algorithmic endeavor; and the CRE mental model sources the big ideas and mental habits that regularly produce learning experiences for students that tap into their cultural fluencies so that they can find the traction and motivation for thinking rigorously. The CRE mental model with its six themes and five planning questions, has developed organically over many years in design spaces with teachers.

Teachers have to make decisions about how to present, when to intervene, what is most relevant, and whom is centered in instruction. These teacher-moves are a function of an artful way of thinking about opportunities to learn. The Design Studio is the space where we gather to collate and enrich, to interrogate and to interpret... it's where we learn to navigate the necessary uncertainties in planning—much like the artist.

ADEYEMI STEMBRIDGE, PhD

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What is a Design Studio?