Designing for Learning in Communities

This course will investigate how communities learn and change, mediated in the day-to-day by practical tools, relationships involving status, institutional policies and by historical “funds” of knowledge. The primary goals of this course are to consider: How do communities come to know what they know? How might the diverse qualities and backgrounds (e.g., race, gender, class, ethnicity, language, culture) of individuals in communities be used as resources for the learning of the group? How do individual, organizational and community practices of knowing build on one another? How do learning and identity practices co-develop within communities? From developing a theory-informed background on learning in community settings, the course will move to considerations of initiating and designing for change. [3 credits]