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

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