Movement IV
Theoretical Frameworks
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
Following Gay (2010), culture is central to the teaching, learning, and meaning-making processes. Black learners bring narrative, linguistic, and ancestral knowledge that must shape instructional design and the multimodal practices they engage in.
This is substantiated by Hammond (2015), who suggests that culturally responsive teaching practices activate a depth of cognitive engagement by accessing students’ cultural schemas, which is essential for academic success.
Afrofuturist Praxis + Afro-Diasporic / African-Centred Epistemologies
Afrofuturism offers a future-facing critical lens that centres Black presence, creativity, and possibility. Womack (2013) situates Afrofuturism as a cultural practice linking memory with imagination, while Eseonu and Okoye (2024) demonstrate its power as a qualitative inquiry method for envisioning liberatory futures.
Ubuntu: ‘I am because we are' emphasizes the collective identity and interconnectedness that underlie many Afro-diasporic cultural values. This concept of self also incorporates eco-spirituality, which reflects a reverence for nature as part of one’s identity. These principles seek to empower students to connect with their cultural heritage and inner resources, creating a sense of rootedness and resilience in their educational journeys.
Afrofuturism offers a dynamic lens for reimagining education as a space where Afro-diasporic knowledge, values, and identities are centred. This framework allows students to envision themselves as part of a culturally rich and technologically advanced future.
These principles form an epistemological foundation where ancestral memory, relationality, imagination, and future-building operate as core learning modalities.
Critical Game Design
Bogost (2007) and Flanagan (2009) frame critical play as a means to question norms and explore identity through making, while Chang, Gray, and Bird (2021) extend this through a games-of-colour pedagogy that positions digital play as cultural resistance and self-representation.
Both of these approaches frame XR game-making as inquiry and a site for multimodal literacy development, where youth develop narrative, spatial, digital, and collaborative competencies using creative making.