Designing Learning Environments for Social Dreaming: From Inquiry to Insight, and Action

This study was developed as a thesis project for the MFA in Transdisciplinary Design, at Parsons The New School for Design (New York), and presents how design and social-emotional learning can support students, teachers and school leadership investigate their sense of agency and possibility, in which students are empowered to create the futures they want to be a part of. It was created around the concept of social dreaming and the question of how we might democratize learning from teacher-centered to student-led and create time for sense-making within classrooms. Insights were collected from seven workshops in three countries (India, China, and the U.S.) and a series of prototypes with middle schools in New York City, during the year 2015/16. It uses model-making and systems thinking to translate insights into design principles, and then, prototypes. It ultimately positions the role of design in supporting the creation of systems of learning that are based on the emerging future, through which, learners have the opportunity of exploring and understanding how they can become a part of the story of the future rather than holding onto and embodying the story of the past.