The Space Beyond Equity: A Blueprint of Radical Possibilities in School Design

Abstract

School facilities are increasingly seen as essential to achieving educational equity. By foregrounding often taken-for-granted school spaces, this conceptual article seeks to situate school design within broader antiracist efforts in education. To that end, I make a few critical contributions: (a) I shift attention to the social construction and contestation of school spaces; and (b) I develop a framework for dealing with racialized imaginaries of school spaces that goes beyond conventional equity applications. Applying this framework to school design literature and planning documents, I derive a blueprint to examine minoritized school spaces that encompasses aspects of culture, wellbeing, and power.