From contradictions to kinship: expansive learning and concept formation in the wild

Introduction This article examines the Explorer Program, a culturally grounded credit-recovery pathway co-designed through the Indigenous Learning Lab at a rural high school in the United States. Grounded in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Indigenous relational epistemologies, the study investigates how historically produced contradictions in schooling, particularly between punitive disciplinary regimes and Indigenous kinship-based values, generated conditions for collective expansive learning and decolonizing agency between 2019 and 2024. Rather than framing student disengagement as an individual or familial deficit, the study conceptualizes schooling as a historically situated activity system shaped by settler-colonial logics, racialized discipline practices, and disrupted relations of kinship. Methods Using a longitudinal formative intervention design, Indigenous youth, educators, community members, and university researchers engaged in iterative cycles of collective analysis, design, and enactment. Processes of double stimulation were central, as participants mobilized Indigenous cosmologies, including the Seven Grandfather teachings, Anishinaabe lifeways, and land-based practices. These resources functioned as mediating cultural artifacts for kin-making, supporting the collective reworking of relationships, responsibilities, and meanings within the schooling activity system. Data sources included participant narratives, observations of Learning Lab sessions, and program records documenting attendance, disciplinary referrals, credit accrual, and graduation outcomes. Analyses traced how contradictions were surfaced, reinterpreted, and resolved through collective design activity. Results Through these processes, Indigenous Learning Lab participants reframed student disengagement from a behavioral problem to a form of cultural disconnection produced by schooling structures and disciplinary logics. Kin-making emerged as a central mediational process, enabling participants to rebuild relational ties among students, families, educators, and community members. This reframing catalyzed the emergence of new practices and organizational forms, including Tuesday Check-ins, restorative approaches to discipline, and the Explorer Program itself. Students reported increased senses of belonging, motivation, and purpose; educators observed sustained improvements in engagement and relational trust; and program records showed substantial reductions in absenteeism and disciplinary referrals, with graduation rates approaching 100 percent among participating students. Discussion The study advances learning theory by linking CHAT-based expansive learning and concept formation in the wild with kin-making as a mediational and relational process. It demonstrates how Indigenous communities reclaim epistemic authorship in educational design by transforming schooling activity systems in ecologically valid, culturally sustaining, and adaptive ways. More broadly, the study contributes to the learning sciences by illustrating how Indigenous-led research–practice partnerships can support equity-oriented systems change and generate inclusive educational futures grounded in relational responsibility, sovereignty, and collective agency.