ICLS Symposium | iY-3_PARTICIPATORY-SOCIAL-JUSTICE | Bridging Gaps: Participatory Design as a Tool for Social Justice in Education

This symposium explores how participatory design (PD) can disrupt the "one-size-fits-all" approach by fostering equitable, responsive, and contextually relevant practices in the learning sciences. Leveraging PD to address systemic inequities, the symposium showcases studies that empower immigrant teens as co-designers and learners in crafting experiences for informed civic participation, employ micro-genetic analyses to examine equitable partnerships among diverse stakeholders, explore curriculum co-design in resource-constrained settings to enhance teacher agency, utilise cooperative inquiry for designing inclusive schools for LGBTQIA+ students, and use of participatory design to advance inclusiveness in an international network of informal STEM clubs. This symposium illustrates how PD can change educational spaces and advance the Learning Sciences' commitment to social justice, ethical collaboration, and inclusive practices through case studies, methodological insights, and interactive discussions.