Social, Cognitive, Historical, Technological and Material Dimensions of Learning Trajectories in Designed Learning Environments

The goal of my dissertation research is to track learning (e.g., developing capabilities, understanding, and participation) in an informal after school cooking and science learning environment designed based on constructivist theories of and approaches to learning. I seek to understand what factors contribute to and prohibit learning. I am taking four points of view on learning and knowing to articulate the social, cognitive, historical, technological, and material dimension of learning and knowing. Preliminary results from my analysis highlight three dimensions of the social and material worlds that provide structure in the learning environment and that facilitate the types of experiences and learning that we intended by our design. The three dimensions are the with respect to the (i) relative close proximity and openness of adjacent social and material configurations; (ii) the historically temporal nature of social and material negotiation of an artifact’s history; and (iii) the rise of new social and material configurations as a result of temporally spatially displaced individuals.