ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
This article is part of the Research TopicStrengthening Equity in and through Research Collaborations in EducationView all 8 articles
From Contradictions to Kinship: Expansive Learning and Concept Formation in the Wild
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
- 2Lakeland Union High School, Minocqua, United States
- 3Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Lac du Flambeau, United States
- 4Helsingin yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland
- 5Tampereen yliopisto ja Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu, Tampere, Finland
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Abstract This article examines the Explorer Program, a culturally grounded credit-recovery pathway co-designed through the Indigenous Learning Lab in northern Wisconsin. Guided by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the study analyzes how historically rooted contradictions in schooling fostered collective expansive learning and decolonizing agency between 2019 and 2024. We focus on a central contradiction between punitive school discipline and Indigenous kinship values. Through processes of double stimulation, Indigenous youth, educators, community members, and researchers drew on Indigenous cosmologies, including the Seven Grandfather teachings, Anishinaabe lifeways, and land-based practices as mediating resources. These practices supported a collective reframing of student disengagement from an individual or familial deficit to a form of cultural disconnection produced by schooling. This reframing contributed to the emergence of new practices, including Tuesday Check-ins, restorative approaches, and the Explorer Program itself. Students reported increased belonging and motivation, educators observed improved engagement, and program records showed reductions in absenteeism and disciplinary referrals, with graduation rates approaching 100 percent. Analytically, the study extends theories of learning by linking concept formation in the wild with kin-making as a mediational process, highlighting how Indigenous communities reclaim epistemic authorship and design inclusive, ecologically valid, and sustainable educational futures.
Keywords: concept formation in the wild, expansive learning, indigenous epistemologies, kin-making, Research–practice partnerships
Received: 21 Oct 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 BAL, Orie, Massey, Maulson, Maki, Engeström and Sannino. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: AYDIN BAL
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