Belonging as a Framework for Justice

This research offers photovoice methods as a means for designers to adopt abolitionist perspectives in professional practice relevant to K-12 design. In existing literature, photovoice methods have been utilized to engage student sense of belonging. Separately, abolitionist theory has been adopted and applied in design contexts in order to identify opportunities for designers to engage in goals associated with racial justice and restorative justice. This work contributes a unique application of photovoice methods for abolitionist design perspectives, with the intention of centering student belonging in a K-12 design process. Doing so can fulfill goals from abolition such as disrupting the school-prison nexus – a phenomenon that highlights the symbiotic relationships between schools and prisons, and ultimately leads to disproportionate academic and belonging outcomes for racialized and otherwise marginalized students.

In order to demonstrate these relationships, concepts from abolitionist theory were applied to a design process in professional practice. This approach is intended to encourage designers to disrupt power structures and hierarchies embedded in K-12 design processes and center design responses that are reparative. Reparative design responses thoughtfully address a plurality of belonging experiences that include marginalized students. Photovoice methods were identified as a tool with the capacity to center these principles and uncover student sense of belonging for design feedback. The methods were tested in a multiday, student-engaged, photovoice study at a high school located in a Seattle suburb. The results successfully demonstrated how photovoice could begin transforming the design process by delivering insights into spatial experiences relevant to the school-prison nexus. Photovoice represents one element of a larger effort to adopt a more liberation-oriented architectural practice. However, it is focused on in this study for its potential to make tangible lived belonging experience investigation for K-12 designers and more broadly, engage student participants in accessible co-design processes.