Abstract
This case study examines the activities of four students participating in a Social Design-Based Experiment (SDBE) in which youth engaged in speculative (re)design challenges using the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). Through qualitative analyses, we examined how youth engaged in joint problem-solving, developed new relationships, and co-constructed alternative cultural and ecological futures. Specifically, we observed how speculative narratives, artifacts, and play-based scenarios organized around societal dilemmas mediated students’ transformative world-making — a structural and epistemic creative process in which individuals collaboratively critique, tinker with, and redesign the systems that shape sociotechnical and material worlds. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives and Bateson’s (1972) theories of learning, we propose a model for how play-based learning ecologies can support youths’ transformative world-making across three interrelated learning phases: seeding, cultivating, and harvesting. Our findings reveal that at the seeding stage of transformative world-making, youth collaboratively experimented with ideas, game mechanics, and potential tools they could leverage to transform the virtual world. In the cultivating phase, students began to critique and tinker with the ideologies encoded within the game’s structures, including carceral logics and anthropocentric designs. In the harvesting phase, students materialized their imaginations by creating new infrastructures, such as converting a sheriff’s office into a community center, and by composing collective manifestos that challenged hegemonic norms to articulate alternative social and ecological futures. This study has implications for how educators might co-design game-based learning ecologies that support youth in imagining and transforming the systems they navigate in their everyday lives.
This case study examines the activities of four students participating in a Social Design-Based Experiment (SDBE) in which youth engaged in speculative (re)design challenges using the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). Through qualitative analyses, we examined how youth engaged in joint problem-solving, developed new relationships, and co-constructed alternative cultural and ecological futures. Specifically, we observed how speculative narratives, artifacts, and play-based scenarios organized around societal dilemmas mediated students’ transformative world-making — a structural and epistemic creative process in which individuals collaboratively critique, tinker with, and redesign the systems that shape sociotechnical and material worlds. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives and Bateson’s (1972) theories of learning, we propose a model for how play-based learning ecologies can support youths’ transformative world-making across three interrelated learning phases: seeding, cultivating, and harvesting. Our findings reveal that at the seeding stage of transformative world-making, youth collaboratively experimented with ideas, game mechanics, and potential tools they could leverage to transform the virtual world. In the cultivating phase, students began to critique and tinker with the ideologies encoded within the game’s structures, including carceral logics and anthropocentric designs. In the harvesting phase, students materialized their imaginations by creating new infrastructures, such as converting a sheriff’s office into a community center, and by composing collective manifestos that challenged hegemonic norms to articulate alternative social and ecological futures. This study has implications for how educators might co-design game-based learning ecologies that support youth in imagining and transforming the systems they navigate in their everyday lives.
Introduction
Building on recent work identifying how to support young people in futures-oriented practices, this paper proposes that non-dominant youth can learn to create new relationships with sociotechnical systems, while also expanding their social imagination, through a process we call transformative world-making. These practices necessarily involve young people critiquing socio-technical systems, while simultaneously re-imagining new networks and social futures that privilege their values, commitments, and desires. More specifically, we conceptualize transformative world-making as a structural and epistemic creative process, wherein individuals collaboratively critique, tinker with, and redesign the systems that structure sociotechnical and material worlds.
Building on recent work identifying how to support young people in futures-oriented practices, this paper proposes that non-dominant youth can learn to create new relationships with sociotechnical systems, while also expanding their social imagination, through a process we call transformative world-making. These practices necessarily involve young people critiquing socio-technical systems, while simultaneously re-imagining new networks and social futures that privilege their values, commitments, and desires. More specifically, we conceptualize transformative world-making as a structural and epistemic creative process, wherein individuals collaboratively critique, tinker with, and redesign the systems that structure sociotechnical and material worlds.
Literature Review
To better understand youth’s transformative world-making, particularly their capacity to envision and design alternatives to existing sociopolitical conditions, we turned to sociocultural and critical understandings of the imagination.
To better understand youth’s transformative world-making, particularly their capacity to envision and design alternatives to existing sociopolitical conditions, we turned to sociocultural and critical understandings of the imagination.
- imagination enables individuals to transcend their immediate surroundings and enter past, future, or alternate realities (Zittoun and Gillespie, 2005)
- imagination leads to unique creations based on personal and emotional experiences (Vygotsky, 2004)
- imagination as a site of struggle for reshaping futures (Benjamin, 2024)
Theoretical Framework
Gregory Bateson’s (1972) learning framework provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how learners’ shared inquiries, play, and design processes move from engaging with a world as it is to collectively tinkering and transforming it.
- Learning I refers to the acquisition of rules and responses deemed “correct” within a given context (Bateson, 1972). Learning I involves learning through direct experience and immediate feedback, where individuals adjust their actions based on stimuli without questioning the broader system.
- Learning II involves moving beyond rule-following toward an awareness of the underlying logics and structures that shape participation.
- Learning III represents a radical shift in which individuals fundamentally transform the systems they engage with, constructing alternative possibilities for action and participation.
Methodology
This study is a case study of four students in our virtual after school lab, a Social Design-Based Experiment (Gutiérrez, 2008) that leveraged video game play to create a learning ecology that positioned youth as world-makers, engaging them in role-play to critique oppressive narratives and tinker with ideologies embedded in the code of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). We analyzed how educators and youth co-constructed imaginary scenarios around societal and historical dilemmas to (re)design the virtual video game city. Our study is situated at the intersections of play, speculative design, and justice-centered epistemologies to explore how virtual worlds can be leveraged as rich contexts for examining how transformative world-making can be supported amongst youth from non-dominant communities.
This study is a case study of four students in our virtual after school lab, a Social Design-Based Experiment (Gutiérrez, 2008) that leveraged video game play to create a learning ecology that positioned youth as world-makers, engaging them in role-play to critique oppressive narratives and tinker with ideologies embedded in the code of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). We analyzed how educators and youth co-constructed imaginary scenarios around societal and historical dilemmas to (re)design the virtual video game city. Our study is situated at the intersections of play, speculative design, and justice-centered epistemologies to explore how virtual worlds can be leveraged as rich contexts for examining how transformative world-making can be supported amongst youth from non-dominant communities.
Findings
The findings focus on a case study of four students (Maya, Jordan, Riley, Talia) and educators collaborating with this group to support their transformative world-building. Through activities that supported the development of speculative relationality and transdisciplinarity (Cortez, McKoy, Lizzarraga, 2022), educators emphasized the importance of relationship-building and imaginative thinking and leveraged a diverse set of disciplinary and everyday tools to support youth’s design processes. Specifically, students participated in an activity where they took on the role of (re)designers of the virtual dystopian city.
The findings focus on a case study of four students (Maya, Jordan, Riley, Talia) and educators collaborating with this group to support their transformative world-building. Through activities that supported the development of speculative relationality and transdisciplinarity (Cortez, McKoy, Lizzarraga, 2022), educators emphasized the importance of relationship-building and imaginative thinking and leveraged a diverse set of disciplinary and everyday tools to support youth’s design processes. Specifically, students participated in an activity where they took on the role of (re)designers of the virtual dystopian city.
Seeding Possibilities
In one student’s story, Piggins begins with a deep mistrust of humans due to past harms, prompting the group to consider what kinds of actions and commitments would be necessary to rebuild trust between species. By centering Piggins as a narrative focal point, Talia opened space for the group to explore themes of care, protection, and ecological interdependence. This narrative move by the student, laid the early groundwork for a more relational and justice-oriented approach to world-making. As such, in this seeding phase, students explored how art, disciplinary knowledge, and narratives could function as political tools within the game world, planting conceptual seeds for a more interconnected and reciprocal ethic of sustainability within the Paleto Bay ecology. These initial engagements set the stage for Learning II, cultivating, where students began to critique and tinker with the ideologies encoded into the virtual city’s architecture.
Cultivating: Critiquing and Denouncing Structures
The Paleto Bay group began to develop an emergent critique of the social and ecological systems that contributed to the imagined collapse of the city. Their reflections extend earlier conversations around leveraging possible tools, such as art, narratives, and activism to protect wildlife, by pushing toward a more systemic understanding of social and ecological transformations. Specifically, the students in the group began to critique the hidden logics and dominant ideologies that positioned nature as an expendable resource. This shift reflects the second stage of transformative world-making, wherein youth begin to collectively develop the landscape of possibilities through systemic and ideological critiques, or what we frame as cultivating. Beyond the aforementioned dialogue, students also began to document their critiques of the ideological structures reflected in the architecture of the virtual world. For instance, they took pictures of a lumber yard in the virtual Paleto bay area to substantiate their conjectures that the city had fallen as a result of environmental degradation and systemic practices such as deforestation. Through this critical virtual documentation activity, these young people cultivated the grounds for transformation and identified “not respecting the environment” as a major failure and problem space to be transformed in their own reimagined futures.
Harvesting Sustainable Futures
This manifesto embodied the various values and axiological commitments of the case study group. The manifesto functioned as a form of harvesting (Learning III) as it reflected students’ movement from critique and tinkering to the co-construction of new ecological, political, and ethical orientations grounded in their sociohistorical lives and collective imaginations. This manifesto served as a prototype for the kind of democratic and collective governance that the group envisioned. Of importance, this manifesto was performed collectively to the rest of the students. In the beginning of the reading, students and researcher 1 alternated in the reading of the lines. However, at the end of the manifesto, students decided to record themselves collectively, to showcase how their manifesto is heteroglossic just as their imagined form of governance in their region of the city.
One example of how their manifesto materialized was their transformation of the Paleto Bay sheriff’s office into a community center. Through a documentary assignment, where students were asked to create a documentary about their virtual region with their avatars, students in the group used their avatars to navigate Paleto Bay and analyzed sites that reproduced oppression to propose sustainable alternatives. In the following exchange, students critique a former prison site and collaboratively design a new vision for accountability and care. In redesigning this carceral space as a site of healing, rehabilitation, and community care, the students drew on core principles they had outlined in their manifesto.
Implications
This study highlights transformative world-making as a powerful and consequential type of learning, especially for young people from non-dominant communities whose stories have historically been marginalized or erased in popular sci-fi narratives about futures. We argue that enabling youth to experiment, tinker, critique, and transform virtual worlds empowers them to denounce and announce (Freire, 2015) the kinds of values, ethics, and social realities they want to live. Our work provides a model for how to support students throughout their transformative world-making processes across three distinct, yet interrelated phases: seeding, cultivating, and harvesting. We offer examples of speculative documentaries, virtual design challenges, and collaborative infrastructure-building as forms of mediated praxis that support transformative world-making Importantly, transformative world-making enables youth to leverage their interests, engage in peer-supported learning, and engage in academic development through the writing and repurposing of new media artifacts. This form of connected learning (Ito et al, 2013), can empower and engage students to bridge their sociohistorical lives and visions of the future with the development of literacies that are consequential to their academic and everyday lives.
This study highlights transformative world-making as a powerful and consequential type of learning, especially for young people from non-dominant communities whose stories have historically been marginalized or erased in popular sci-fi narratives about futures. We argue that enabling youth to experiment, tinker, critique, and transform virtual worlds empowers them to denounce and announce (Freire, 2015) the kinds of values, ethics, and social realities they want to live. Our work provides a model for how to support students throughout their transformative world-making processes across three distinct, yet interrelated phases: seeding, cultivating, and harvesting. We offer examples of speculative documentaries, virtual design challenges, and collaborative infrastructure-building as forms of mediated praxis that support transformative world-making Importantly, transformative world-making enables youth to leverage their interests, engage in peer-supported learning, and engage in academic development through the writing and repurposing of new media artifacts. This form of connected learning (Ito et al, 2013), can empower and engage students to bridge their sociohistorical lives and visions of the future with the development of literacies that are consequential to their academic and everyday lives.
References
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Toronto: Chandler.
Bang, M. (2020). Learning on the Move Toward Just, Sustainable, and Culturally Thriving Futures. Cognition and Instruction, 38(3), 434–444. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2020.1777999
Benjamin, R. (2024). Imagination: A manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company.
Cortez, A., McKoy, A., & Lizárraga, J. R. (2022). The future of young Blacktivism: Aesthetics and practices of speculative activism in video game play. The Journal of Futures Studies, 26(3), 53–70. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202203_26(3).0005
Engeström, Y. (2016). Introduction: Learning sciences at the threshold of expansion. In Y. Engeström (Ed.), Studies in expansive learning: Learning what is not yet there (pp. 3–11). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316225363.002
Chang, M. A., & Philip, T. M. (2025). Caught between expansive world‑building and the status quo: Using figured worlds to understand world‑building in AI for educational co‑design contexts. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(2), 1–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2025.2490514
Cole, M., & Engeström, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 1–46). Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity-theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. New York, NY: Routledge
Freire, P. (2015). Pedagogy of indignation. Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2014). Unified discourse analysis: Language, reality, virtual worlds and video games. Routledge.
Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3
Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., Schor, J., Sefton-Green, J., & Watkins, S. C. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom dreams: The Black radical imagination. Beacon Press.
Lee, C. D. (2008). The centrality of culture to the scientific study of learning and development: How an ecological framework in educational research facilitates civic responsibility. Educational Researcher, 37(5), 267–279. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X08322683
McDermott, R., & Raley, J. (2011). Looking Closely: Toward. The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, 372.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Reynante, B., Ardoin, N. M., & Pea, R. D. (2025). Envisioning sustainable climate imaginaries through an “engineering fiction” learning experience: A content analysis of youth stories. Futures, 138, Article 103637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103637
Rivero, E., & Gutiérrez, K. D. (2019). “You know what’s glitching?”: Emergent digital literacies in video game play. In O. Erstad, R. Flewitt, B. Kümmerling‑Meibauer, & Í. S. P. Pereira (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital literacies in early childhood (pp. 158–168). Routledge.
Tanksley, T. C. (2024). “We’re changing the system with this one”: Black students using critical race algorithmic literacies to subvert and survive AI‑mediated racism in school. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 23(1), 36–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0102
Vakil, S., & de Royston, M. M. (2019). Exploring politicized trust in a racially diverse computer science classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(4), 545–567. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592846.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood (M. E. Sharpe, Trans.). Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97.
Wolf, M. J. P. (2014). Building imaginary worlds: The theory and history of subcreation. Routledge.
Zittoun, T., & Gillespie, A. (2015). Imagination in human and cultural development. Routledge.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Toronto: Chandler.
Bang, M. (2020). Learning on the Move Toward Just, Sustainable, and Culturally Thriving Futures. Cognition and Instruction, 38(3), 434–444. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2020.1777999
Benjamin, R. (2024). Imagination: A manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company.
Cortez, A., McKoy, A., & Lizárraga, J. R. (2022). The future of young Blacktivism: Aesthetics and practices of speculative activism in video game play. The Journal of Futures Studies, 26(3), 53–70. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202203_26(3).0005
Engeström, Y. (2016). Introduction: Learning sciences at the threshold of expansion. In Y. Engeström (Ed.), Studies in expansive learning: Learning what is not yet there (pp. 3–11). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316225363.002
Chang, M. A., & Philip, T. M. (2025). Caught between expansive world‑building and the status quo: Using figured worlds to understand world‑building in AI for educational co‑design contexts. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(2), 1–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2025.2490514
Cole, M., & Engeström, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 1–46). Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity-theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. New York, NY: Routledge
Freire, P. (2015). Pedagogy of indignation. Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2014). Unified discourse analysis: Language, reality, virtual worlds and video games. Routledge.
Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3
Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., Schor, J., Sefton-Green, J., & Watkins, S. C. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom dreams: The Black radical imagination. Beacon Press.
Lee, C. D. (2008). The centrality of culture to the scientific study of learning and development: How an ecological framework in educational research facilitates civic responsibility. Educational Researcher, 37(5), 267–279. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X08322683
McDermott, R., & Raley, J. (2011). Looking Closely: Toward. The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, 372.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Reynante, B., Ardoin, N. M., & Pea, R. D. (2025). Envisioning sustainable climate imaginaries through an “engineering fiction” learning experience: A content analysis of youth stories. Futures, 138, Article 103637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103637
Rivero, E., & Gutiérrez, K. D. (2019). “You know what’s glitching?”: Emergent digital literacies in video game play. In O. Erstad, R. Flewitt, B. Kümmerling‑Meibauer, & Í. S. P. Pereira (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital literacies in early childhood (pp. 158–168). Routledge.
Tanksley, T. C. (2024). “We’re changing the system with this one”: Black students using critical race algorithmic literacies to subvert and survive AI‑mediated racism in school. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 23(1), 36–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0102
Vakil, S., & de Royston, M. M. (2019). Exploring politicized trust in a racially diverse computer science classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(4), 545–567. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592846.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood (M. E. Sharpe, Trans.). Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97.
Wolf, M. J. P. (2014). Building imaginary worlds: The theory and history of subcreation. Routledge.
Zittoun, T., & Gillespie, A. (2015). Imagination in human and cultural development. Routledge.