Following the trail of the 5th dimension: learning from contradictions in a university-community partnership

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, our research group has developed a set of action research projects inspired by the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition's Fifth Dimension. In this article, we analyze their historical trajectories by examining their sustainability from the perspective of the experiment by design, as developed by Michael Cole. Taking the motives and contradictions of all partners involved as a starting point, we present a brief analysis of the development of three sites throughout more than 12 years of their existence, revealing the construction of a third space in which the university and the school community pursue their respective goals.

Expanding Cycles of Collaboration and Critical Inquiry in Utopian Methodology. The 360 Education Alliance Case

“…The origin, then, of these strategies and concepts can be found in the theories and proposals that favour extending the traditional role of the researcher and the researched, among other binaries. This is the case, for instance, of the Fifth Dimension model, in which traditional binariessuch as university vs. community, in-school vs. afterschool, research vs. subjectare problematized (Cole, 2016;Cole & The Distributed Literacy Consortium, 2006;Lalueza et al, 2020). The Fifth Dimension consists of an educational after-school program established in the 1980s as a partnership between community centers and local colleges to provide activities, based on play and peer interaction, to provide rich opportunities to acquire knowledge and a wide range of skills such as digital literacy and mathematics (Cole, 2016).…”

Community Resilience Processes in Schools with Roma Students during COVID-19: Two Case Studies in Spain

“…Finally, in terms of collective action and participatory culture, we can identify a wide range of practices that turn education into a complex activity that incorporates multiple educational agents in schools. Such practices include, among others, intergenerational learning processes-such as the University of California's Fifth Dimension model created to foster the development of vulnerable communities in their environment in collaboration with their students [30,31], and that has been implemented in other latitudes [32]; the diversification of the forms of relationship with families and their inclusion in school dynamics [33]; learning communities [34]; the participation of university students in service-learning programs [35]; and networking with other community entities [36,37].…”

“…It was transformed into a primary and secondary school (3 to 16 years old), organized into a community of practice and included in a network of neighborhood organizations. It also began a close collaboration with the university to develop projects such as the Fifth Dimension [32], the Funds of Knowledge [38], the Identity Funds [39] and the Community Funds of Knowledge and Identity [29]. Five years later, this transformation allowed the return of the population that previously avoided the center and substantially improved the permanence of the student body until the end of compulsory education at 16 years of age-all within a center with a great diversity of educational agents in addition to teachers.…”

Manifiesto en Tiempos de Pandemia: Por una Educación Crítica, Intergeneracional, Sostenible y Comunitaria

“…Por ejemplo, la experiencia "Ciberbressol" en la que un grupo de jóvenes gitanas crearon en la Asociación Gitana de Badalona un espacio en el que jóvenes madres del barrio se encontraban con sus hijos en un entorno híbrido, con juguetes y estoras en el suelo, y ordenadores en las mesas, desarrollando una actividad de juego para los niños y de intercambio para las madres, al tiempo que éstas participaban en un curso orientado a la obtención del graduado en ESO. Es decir, ludoteca, escuela de familias y escuela de segunda oportunidad en un espacio híbrido culturalmente definido por prácticas propias de una comunidad gitana y prácticas de educación formal (Lalueza, Sánchez-Busqués y García-Romero, 2019). En este sentido, la aproximación de los fondos de conocimiento e identidad, anteriormente mencionada, persigue vincular el currículum y objetivos pedagógicos con las vidas de los estudiantes y sus familias dentro y fuera de los tiempos y espacios escolares (Esteban-Guitart, 2016).…”