Ostrowski, A.K., Das, M., Roeder, G., Saadi. J.I., Harrington, C., Verma, A., Breazeal, C., D’Ignazio, C., & Yang, M. 2024. Supporting reflexivity and action on equity and justice in design education: Insights from the design justice pedagogy summit. Design Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS) 14.

Abstract

As engineering shifts to center and prioritize socio-technical problems, topics such as sustainability, equity, and justice are becoming increasingly engaged within engineering. Engineering education and other design education fields are seeking to incorporate equity, ethics, and justice considerations into design curricula to embrace this change and meet calls for supporting human flourishing such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs). To accomplish this meaningfully and successfully, design education instructors are seeking guidance and support to embed these concepts into their courses. In this paper, we explore the Design Justice Pedagogy Summit, where design instructors engaged with keynote speeches, panel conversations, and three interactive activities. An “initial step” workshop, syllabus “makeathon”, and policy envisioning activities supported instructors in planning changes for their courses to embed equity, ethics, and justice content and charting out sustainable paths for the future. Our work advocates for increased documentation of embedding design justice into design education, building communities to support instructors to engage with these topics, more teaching resources for instructors on these topics, and industry incentivization to center equity, ethics, and justice in design education. Through these actions, we can support instructors and university institutions in sustainably engaging with design justice as a way to work towards reaching the UN-SDGs.