Microgenesis of Culture Within Fifth Dimensions
As discussed in a recent monograph about the Fifth Dimension research program (Cole & The Distributed Literacy Consortium, 2006), every Fifth Dimension constitutes an “idioculture,” (“a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs shared by members of an interacting group to which members can refer and that serve as the basis of further interaction”). At present we are engaged in an analysis of two decades of electronically stored field notes containing descriptions written by participants in a variety of Fifth Dimensions in order to provide a quantitative, comparative description of the growth of Fifth Dimension idiocultures that is compatible with typical qualitative descriptions of such phenomena. This work entails coding of field notes for key indicators of culture formation sequentially over one quarter periods and aggregating the field notes from a given site and quarter to lay bare the process of enculturation.