Transdisciplinarity in Social Design–Based Experiments

• In Event: Critical and Emergent Perspectives on Transdisciplinarity in Learning

Abstract

Objectives

In this paper, we argue the affordances of transdisciplinarity with reference to horizontal and vertical forms of competence and expertise (Engeström, 1999; Author 1, 2008), both in terms of their development in youth from non-dominant backgrounds and in design of transformative learning ecologies for said youth. To elucidate the importance of advancing a transdisciplinary-oriented lens to examine the ways in which non-dominant youth (re)negotiate their learning, agency, and identities within and across contexts, we situate our discussion in relation to social design-based experiments (SDBEs) (Author 1, 2008, 2016, 2018). With a focus on historicity, diversity, equity, re-mediation, prolepsis, transformability and sustainability as design principles, SDBEs represent a paradigm shift in conducting educational and social interventions by emphasizing the importance of creating and studying change in partnership with a range of communities wherein new practices and futures can be co-designed.

Modes of Inquiry and Theoretical Framework

To contextualize our inquiry on the transdisciplinary nature of SDBEs, we provide in this paper a set of empirical vignettes that draw attention to the hybrid and mobile dynamics embedded in nondominant youths’ sociocultural development and learning as youth leverage digital media and technologies to challenge the social order in their everyday lives. In particular, we examine how the forms of agency indexed in the nondominant youths’ engagement with digital technologies can be understood through the analytical lens of becoming historical actors (Espinoza, 2003; Author 1, 2008; Author 1 et al., 2019) where youth negotiate everyday dilemmas, push against the intentions of systems and their designers (Harrell, 2013), repurpose tools toward new ends, and resist local and historical sociopolitical inequities. Our examination sheds light on the affordances of perceiving agency as a distributed phenomenon, involving the deployment of vertical and horizontal expertise, particularly in our increasingly interconnected world. As highlighted in our preceding descriptions of the design principles of SDBEs, attention to equity and historicity reminds us that the everyday moments, which have often been relegated to the margins of consequential learning (Jurow & Shea, 2015), constitute a powerful site of learning and development where novel and socially oriented forms of agency can emerge.

Warrants for Arguments/Point of View and Scholarly Significance

Of significance to our discussion of SDBEs, we believe that the transdisciplinary turn in learning sciences entails a critical recognition of the dialectical relationship between scientific (school-based) and everyday concepts and the potential of bringing the two in conversation through their reorganization. The relationship is dialectical in the sense that, one the one hand, scientific concepts structure the pathways for the development of everyday concepts. On the other hand, everyday concepts grounded in everyday activity have the potential to become the contexts for the development of scientific concepts. Therefore, what lies at the heart of our conceptualizations of transdisciplinarity in SDBEs is an imperative call for re-negotiating and productively hybridizing the everyday knowledge vis-a-vis school-based skills and knowledge to cultivate expansive and consequential forms of learning.

Authors

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley

• Peng Yin, Berkeley University of California