Projected worlds: How informal digital learning organizations conceptualize organizing youth futures

Understanding learning as an inherently value-laden and socio-political process is increasingly a concern of the Learning Sciences, and this focus forces us to confront fundamental questions relating to the purposes of learning and the multiplicity of possible and intended futures for learners implied by their learning environments. In this study, we utilize the framework of ‘learning as the organization of social futures’ – one that simultaneously foregrounds values and their expressions within learning activity – to understand orientations of informal digital learning organizations. The study focuses on three organizations, all part of a larger research-practice partnership. Utilizing staff interviews and organizational documentation, our findings show that the kinds of social futures valued by informal digital learning organizations varied in (1) how specified versus open-ended these futures were, (2) their focus on access to existing social futures vs creation of alternative social realities in order to allow new possible futures, (3) their relative focus on individual versus collective futures, with each of these dimensions having implications in terms of ways that pedagogies are designed within these organizations.