Quilting a journey: decolonizing instructional design

Abstract

In many Indigenous communities, the star quilt is a symbol of honor given as a gift to recognize something about which the community is proud. The star quilt was used as a metaphor in this study to critically examine the practices of an instructional designer working in a tribal college context to identify culturally relevant instructional design practices. Instructional design is the systematic process of planning and developing learning environments, such as courses, curricula, or educational software. The researcher utilized an Indigenous approach to autoethnography as methodology to establish the community as the norm by which to critique the practices of the instructional designer—the researcher herself. The study findings culminated in the Star Quilt Framework for Culturally Competent Instructional Design, a relational person model for practice that incorporates the role of the instructional designer as an actor in the design process.