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Boundary-Crossing Competence:
Theoretical Considerations and
Educational Design
a b
Dana Walker & Honorine Nocon
a
University of Northern Colorado ,
b
University of Colorado , Denver, USA
Published online: 05 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Dana Walker & Honorine Nocon (2007) Boundary-Crossing Competence:
Theoretical Considerations and Educational Design, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 14:3, 178-195, DOI:
10.1080/10749030701316318

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 MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 14(3), 178–195
Copyright © 2007, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition

Boundary-Crossing Competence: Theoretical

Considerations and Educational Design

Dana Walker
University of Northern Colorado
Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 14:25 28 October 2014

Honorine Nocon
University of Colorado, Denver

This article provides a conceptual account and empirical analyses of the development of boundary-
crossing competence—the ability to function competently in multiple contexts—using representative
cases from two after-school programs with immigrant and low-socioeconomic status students. Our
findings suggest that organizational designs that create networks of related communities of practice
can provide opportunities for nondominant students to develop boundary-crossing competences
through participation in expanded, horizontal—rather than hierarchal—systems of what Moll and
colleagues have called “networked expertise.” These new directions in understanding competence
have important implications for improving learning designs for nondominant students.

Whereas educators for the most part continue to view competence as residing within the
individual and involving the adequate performance of discrete academic skills, sociocultural
theorists have argued that competence (and incompetence) is socially constructed and has to
do with becoming a full participant, or not, in the culturally defined practices of a community
of engaged persons or an activity system (Jenkins, 1998). There now exists a large body of
comparative research across a range of formal and informal learning contexts describing features
of social contexts that appeared to “mediate competence” and the proficient performance
of students who were deemed unsuccessful in traditional academic settings (Grigorenko &
O’Keefe, 2004; Rogoff, 2003). Yet although there is considerable evidence to support the
notion that competence is defined and constructed within social practices, less attention has
been given to the processes by which individuals cross boundaries to achieve competence in
multiple contexts.
In this article, we provide a conceptual account and empirical analyses of the development of
boundary-crossing competence—the ability to function competently in multiple contexts. We
describe the ways that competence achieved in situated practice can contribute to competence
in related practices through identity work that weaves together both achieved and potential
forms of competent engagement with repertoires from different sociocultural contexts. We
propose a framework for conceptualizing the development of boundary-crossing competence in

Correspondence should be sent to Dana Walker, School of Teacher Education, University of Northern Colorado,
Greeley, CO 80639. E-mail: dana.walker@unco.edu
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 179

terms of “recontextualization” (Van Oers, 1998) and boundary processes that involve cultural
brokers and boundary objects. We are particularly interested in designs for learning environ-
ments that appear to support boundary-crossing competence by connecting related practices
and providing opportunities for novices to connect to “networks relevant to mature practice”
(Eisenhart & Finkel, 1998, p. 8). Such learning environments provide novices with opportu-
nities to participate in expanded, horizontal—rather than hierarchal—systems of what Moll and
colleagues (Moll, Tapia, & Whitmore, 1993) have called “networked expertise.” These new
directions in understanding competence have important implications for research and the design
of learning environments for students from nondominant social groups, including linguistic
minority students with exceptional needs.
In articulating our argument for learning environments and systems that contribute to the
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development of boundary-crossing competence among students from disenfranchised groups,

we draw on two case-within-case studies (Wolcott, 1999): one from an after-school arts and
media literacy program for Latino youth and one from a multilingual after-school technology
club for diverse K–6 children. The first case involves Mexican immigrant middle school
students who were performing marginally in school but who developed and contributed to
defining central competencies in an after-school arts program called ARTES. The second case
involves a younger girl—an Anglo child from a low-income household who had recently been
retained in second grade. As this child develops expertise with information and communication
technologies in the context of the Tech Club, she develops voice and an identity of competence
that extend into other informal and formal learning environments. In both the ARTES and the
Technology Club programs, the adults and youth mentors engaged actively in a process of
collective transformation of the learning communities in response to child and youth partic-
ipants’ interests and forms of engagement. This transformation included networking across
contextual boundaries in which program adults and expert youth acted as relational bridges to
new contexts, reminiscent of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) transcontextual dyads and networks.

COMPETENCE WITHIN AND ACROSS CONTEXTS

Though the notion of competence is used widely in educational research and policy, its exact
meanings and implications remain generally underexamined, even when they are used as the
organizing principle behind important educational reforms such as “competence learning.”
A review of the competence literature reveals that the term has been used synonymously
with “expertise” (Hatano, 1988); “aptitude” (Scheeres & Hager, 1994); “cognitive ability”
(Bloom, Engelhardt, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956); “successful participation” (Rogoff,
1995); “achievement” (Valenzuela, 1999); “performance that meets a standard” (Barnett, 1994);
“effectiveness” (Raver & Zigler, 1997); “practical (not ideal) ability” (Hymes, 1996); the
“possession of required knowledge, skill, qualification, or capacity” (Yerkes, 1996); “the
suitability, adequacy, or appropriateness of means to live in comfort or easy circumstances”
(compilation of dictionary definitions cited in Lonner & Hayes, 2004, p. 90); and the “conno-
tation of competition to meet the standard of adequacy and sufficiency” (Lonner & Hayes,
2004, p. 90). Although the definitions of competence remain vague, there appear to be two
general tendencies in the literature (Westera, 2001). One is the understanding of competence as
an individual accomplishment related to competition, and the other is the relation of competence
to the cultures of ethnolinguistic or geographically bounded communities.
 180 WALKER AND NOCON

In the field of education, the cognitive-behaviorist model of competence prevails. Within

this model, which underlies the majority of current assessment efforts, competence is viewed
as residing within the individual, as involving the acquisition of skills and knowledge, and as
being measurable in terms of performance outcomes (Evans, Newstead, & Byrne, 1993). This
model assumes that cognition is a general competence that characterizes individuals across
situations. The presumption of “objective,” quantifiable measures of competence that do not
take into consideration the social organization of the learning context has been shown to have
detrimental educational consequences for culturally diverse students and those with exceptional
needs (Artiles, 2003; McDermott, 1993).1 Regarding the second tendency noted within the liter-
ature, competence is conceived as being specific to ethnolinguistic or geographically bounded
communities. According to Cole (1996), cross-cultural psychologists, for example, regarded
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competence as “a general personal characteristic underlying widely different aspects of their

behavior without variation across situations” (p. 37). Other sociocultural researchers have noted
that this notion of competence has led to conceptualizations of intercultural and cultural compe-
tence dependent upon accidents of birth that do not take into account diversity within those
communities and among diverse individuals and groups who participate competently in practices
that cross ethnolinguistic, geographical, and social boundaries2 (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003).
In contrast to these two tendencies in the literature on competence, research in the socio-
cultural tradition has explored individual development within the context of specific social and
cultural processes. In shifting the unit of analysis away from the individual or a cultural group,
to the individual engaged in concrete activity, sociocultural theorists draw out the complexity of
the relationship between individual competence and the social context in which it is developed.
These researchers examine the processes by which social contexts mediate competence devel-
opment as well as the social construction of individuals as competent or incompetent participants
within a given setting. As Rueda, Gallegos, and Moll (2000) noted,

The sociocultural perspective focuses on features of the basic social organization and the underlying
assumptions of a given social context, and considers the effects these might have on students’
participation and competence as well as how the individual transforms the context. Some researchers
have found that students’ perceived competence can vary widely, depending on the context. (p. 71)

Activity theorists have taken this notion forward in describing how knowledge and expertise
transfer between contexts—such as school and work—through a process of “developmental
transfer” and “expansive development” involving collaboration and the active reconstruction of
knowledge between two or more activity systems (Tuomi-Gröhn, Engeström, & Young, 2003).
In advancing our notion of boundary-crossing competence, we define competence as the ability,
within a given context, to (a) understand and negotiate the meanings, through the use of material
and symbolic artifacts and (b) to understand and negotiate the meanings, through engagement with
others, of the practices of a group and of the roles of individuals therein. In addition, we view
competence not as being defined narrowly within the practices of a local learning community:

1
The term “students with exceptional needs” refers both to students with disabilities as well as students who are
gifted and talented.
2
This issue is apparent in Erickson’s (1987) critique of Ogbu’s (1987) designations of voluntary and involuntary
minorities as monolithic and unable to account for those members of involuntary minorities who are successful, that
is, highly competent, in the practices of schooling.
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 181

Competence is also a matter of the location of practices with respect to broader historical, social,
and institutional discourses and practices (Wenger, 1998). In this spirit, we argue for an expanded
notion of competence that encompasses the ability to manage and integrate multiple, divergent
discourses and practices across social boundaries. There were two questions guiding our research:
How does competence, constructed within a culturally defined social context, become salient
and the source for competent participation in new settings? If youth from nondominant groups
are attributed identities and positioned within larger systems of meaning and social relations in
ways that impede their movement across contexts, how can a learning environment create the
potential for boundary-crossing competence within and beyond its boundaries?
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THE RECONTEXTUALIZATION OF COMPETENCE

To address the questions of how individuals develop competence across contexts and how the
design of a learning environment can support this development, we elaborate a framework
of “boundary-crossing competence,” building on the concepts of “recontexualization” (Van
Oers, 1998) and “boundary processes” (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Using activity theory to
explain the transformation of activity among children at play, Van Oers hypothesized that
people extend their cognition and create new contexts for thinking and acting through a
process of recontextualization, “the conscious and continuous embedding of contexts within
new contexts” (p. 138). This is similar to the learner’s experience described by Beach (2003) as
an encompassing transition, which “occur[s] within the boundaries of a single social activity that
is itself changing” (p. 45). Recontextualization also relates to Davydov’s sequence of learning
actions (as described in Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003) in that recontextualization involves
transforming the conditions of learning as part of a process that leads to abstraction, theoretical
thinking, and transfer, or what Beach (2003) and Rogoff (2003) would call “generalization.”
Van Oers (1998) described two types of recontextualization: horizontal and vertical. The
former is most useful for our purposes. Horizontal recontextualization involves alternate
realizations of the same activity, as in the case of writing either with a pencil or a computer.
He described how children in his study applied previous actions, such as drawing an object or
situation, to a related but distinct new situation, such as drawing a story. In the process they
create a new but similar context for the activity; they carry out actions in the new situation
that still fall within the previous notion of the activity of drawing. Vertical recontextualization,
on the other hand, occurs when new problems in an activity give rise to “new pivots of action
patterns” (Van Oers, 1998, p. 138).

These action patterns often lead to the invention of new goals, new means for action, and new
strategies. These new action patterns develop into new activities and new contexts for acting
that, although emerging from a well-known activity, are not directly a new, alternative realization
of that activity. This process of progressive continuous contextualizing is a form of vertical
recontextualization. (p. 138)

This form of recontextualization relates specifically to the realization of more abstract activities,
which Van Oers, again resonating Davydov’s (1990) model of rising from the abstract to
the concrete, argued are progressively embedded rather than decontexualized. There is also a
connection here to expansive learning at points of contradiction or discoordination in an activity
 182 WALKER AND NOCON

that leads to expansion to new forms of activity (Engeström, 1987). However, whereas both
Engeström and Tuomi-Gröhn and Engeström (2003) focused on collective development, Van
Oers focused his analysis at the level of individual actions within activity.
We find Van Oers’s framework particularly helpful because it can be used productively
to think about how competence can be recontextualized through the strategic alignment of
contextual elements within a learning environment, such that they connect with elements in
other activity systems. We focus on the mediating artifacts and, particularly in this article,
persons in the communities of related activity systems, conceiving of these aspects of activity
as elements of repertoires and persons whose expertise is, as Bronfenbrenner (1979) would
suggest, transcontextual. We argue that competence can be recontextualized horizontally through
processes involving people as cultural brokers, and complex tools—or “system artifacts”
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(Nocon, 2000)—that serve as boundary objects. In both instances the people and the artifacts
serve as recontextualizing agents—a sort of bridge3 —between social practices that are similar
enough to offer the potential for “alternate realizations” of an activity.

METHOD

The study is a cross-case analysis drawn from extensive qualitative research at the two after-
school programs located in urban areas in California and Colorado. We gathered data on-site
for periods of 2 and 4 years. Methods of data collection included observation, participant
observation, interviews, videotaping, and collection of documents and products of individual
and group work. In the case of the data from the Technology Club, multiple first-person
accounts of participant observation, produced according to a shared template by student interns
and stored electronically in a database, were also used to triangulate the data. Data for the
specific cases documented here were drawn through purposeful sampling of the larger corpuses
of data (Creswell, 1998). To interrogate the concept of boundary-crossing competence, we
chose cases that would illustrate different perspectives on competence as well as cases from
different contexts and from individuals with different backgrounds. The two cases illustrated
here are representative of numerous other cases in our data sets.4
To achieve a more precise understanding of how competencies are constructed through
engagement in activity over time and across contexts, the ARTES study employed an approach
that investigates how cultural resources are taken up (or rejected) and become consequential (or
not) to members in a process of individual and collective codevelopment (Holland, Lachicotte,
Skinner, & Cain, 1998). For example, to illustrate how youth identities and forms of competence
changed over time and across contexts through engagement with dance mentors, Walker (2003)
analyzed discursive and kinesic data with a focus on how repertoire elements from an external
professional dance company were introduced and taken up by the young dancers, and how
these became consequential in supporting the movement of novice dancers from workshop

3
See Nilsson (2003) and Nilsson and Sutter (2005) for a discussion of bridging artifacts. A system artifact (Nocon,
2000) is a complex tool made up of multiple tools that are used in relation to one another and in accordance with rules
of use. The whole or the parts can serve to mediate action or activities.
4
In addition, we have been able to apply our proposed framework for learning environments that contribute to the
development of boundary-crossing competence to cases in similar settings (see Davis, 2005; Nocon, 2005; Vásquez,
2003).
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 183

instruction to performances in public places. In similar fashion, Nocon employed an approach

based on Cole’s (1995) mesogenetic approach, which looks at complex qualitative data over
time on different levels of analysis. Drawing on Lave and Wenger (1991) and particularly
Rogoff (1995), Nocon’s analysis looks at development as transformation in the participation of
people, interaction patterns, and the microcultures of the Technology Club and related activity
settings, with initial attention to significant events, such as completion of program requirements,
as entry points for analysis.
We now move on to describe the two settings from which our case studies were drawn
followed by the two representative cases.
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ARTES

ARTES was an after-school arts and media literacy program for Latino youth offered in a
metropolitan area in Colorado.5 During the 2-year period of data collection (2000–2002), the
program consisted of weekly after-school workshops at a public bilingual middle school; open-
mic poetry and performance events for families and the general public; cultural field trips; and
classes, community service, and production at community access television and radio stations.
The student population of the ARTES consisted of an average of 23 middle school students,
predominately Mexican immigrants (mexicanas/os), who participated voluntarily in the after-
school program. Adult facilitators included Chicano poet–activist mentors, African American
and Chicano rappers, hip-hop and break dance instructors, university student volunteers, the
co-directors (Chicana and Anglo), and a Chicana youth mentor.
The ARTES learning design was an explicit attempt to realign the broader system of
meanings and identity constructions affecting mexicano/a and Chicano/a youth’s academic
and life success. The program founders and participating artists made an intentional effort
to challenge the dominant, negative representations of these youth by creating an alternative
curriculum that drew upon community cultural resources, youth popular culture, and a Chicano/a
artist–activist perspective. The organization’s mission statement reads:

ARTES is an after-school arts program that supports the academic and personal growth of Latino/a
and other students, while promoting greater community involvement. ARTES builds on the strengths
of Latino/a poetry and theater traditions to promote literacy, cultural awareness, and self-expression.
At the same time, ARTES works to increase the participation of Latino/a families in their schools
and in the general cultural life of Arapahoe City. In collaboration with a Chicano/a theater group,
poet mentors, and graduate students from the School of Education, ARTES provides after-school
workshops and community-based cultural activities that tie engagement with the arts to success in
school and community life.

As an intentionally responsive model, the ARTES design ultimately reflected the diverse,
sometimes competing concerns of the multiple communities represented: Chicana/o poet and
artist–activists and educators, hip-hop artist–educators, university students, mexicana/o youth,
and their families. The design changed shape over time in response to these forces, as well as
to the evolving interests of the students.

5
ARTES, a pseudonym—as are all names and acronyms used in this study—was created in the summer of 2000
with funding from local foundations, a state agency, the local state university, the school district, and private donors.
 184 WALKER AND NOCON

Technology Club

Between January 1996 and June 1999, the Technology Club, a multilingual after-school
program, served children ages 5 to 14 from Waverly Elementary in Coast Town, an affluent,
predominantly Anglo town on the coast about 30 miles north of a large West Coast city.
Although the town was quite affluent, 19% of the population was Latino and low income.
Approximately 29% of the community’s children, including those who attended Waverly
Elementary, lived below the federal poverty line.
The design of the Technology Club was based on a Vygotskian model for learning environ-
ments that blended play and learning.6 This particular program mixed children across ages
and languages, including English, Spanish, Russian, and Korean. Undergraduate students and
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researchers from the local university collaborated with the school’s teachers and administrators
and staff from the local Kids Club in offering a program in which children followed self-
designed trajectories through 20 or more tasks, most of them based on educational software and
use of the Internet. When children completed their play and learning in those activities (done
jointly with undergraduate students), they became junior helpers in the program, contributing
to ongoing refinements of program design and the selection of new games and software.
In keeping with the model that inspired the Technology Club, children in the program were
not identified by labels. Participation was open to all the school’s children, and they came
voluntarily from one to four times per week for a period of 11/2 hr. Attendance over the 4 years
of observation averaged about 15 children per session. Approximately 150 different children
participated. Some children were referred by the school’s resource teacher, but other than the
fact that the child was referred, the participating adults were not made aware of diagnoses.
Children in special education programs participated with children from the gifted and talented
program along with children from the mainstream classrooms. The focus of the club was on
the child’s potential.
To elucidate the processes involved in developing boundary-crossing competence, we present
two cases in which we explore the role of individual and collective cultural brokers who
scaffolded the recontextualization of competence.7 We conclude by considering the implications
of this cross-case study for educators and designers of learning contexts.

EDDY AND ARTES: DEVELOPING BOUNDARY-CROSSING

COMPETENCE IN THE HIP-HOP NATION

The role of dance instructors and mentors as cultural brokers who introduced repertoire
elements from professional hip-hop dance companies into ARTES and facilitated connections
and movement from ARTES outward toward external communities of practice and public
performance spaces is illustrated in the case of Eddy and the B-Boys. In this case, a network of
expertise provided opportunities for youth to develop boundary-crossing competence through
their work with the dance mentors, in multiple exposures over time to practices related to

6
The Technology Club was based on the Fifth Dimension model. See Cole (1996) and Cole and the Distributed
Literacy Consortium (2006) for the design and history of this informal education model.
7
The role of boundary objects in developing boundary-crossing competence is the subject of another study (Nocon &
Walker, 2006).
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 185

what is called “The Hip Hop Nation” (George, 1998). One ARTES youth participant, Eddy,
also assumed the role of mentor and cultural broker through ongoing interaction with both the
network of adults and groups of youth participants.
As background to a discussion of Eddy’s case, we begin with an overview of the significance
of dance activity in the ARTES after-school program. Hip-hop and break dance instruction came
to be considered by the program directors as the most crucial design component for ensuring
youth participation and program sustainability. Though ARTES was originally conceived as a
bilingual poetry writing and performance program, the students requested a hip-hop instructor
and visited several dance studios in order to select one. Dance instruction became a key routine
that opened each Friday workshop, transforming the school cafeteria into a youth-centered
space through hip-hop music, artifacts, and bodies moving in accordance with its dance genres.
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Eventually, the contours of the program began to enlarge, stretching beyond the parameters of
the original design to include the multiple communities engaged in similar practices related to
hip-hop practices. This led to the alignment of ARTES goals with those of organizations and
individuals who saw hip-hop as a vehicle for youth education and empowerment. In particular, it
created stronger linkages to university students and resulted in invitations to participate in dance
events on the local college campus, important for youth whose immigration status closed doors to
higher education for them. As the dance activity connected ARTES youth to related communities
of practice in a network that spanned several cities and diverse contexts, youth were recurrently
exposed to alternate realizations of their workshop dance activity. These consequential recurrent
practices8 increased the potential for the development of boundary-crossing competencies.
Eddy, a Chicano-identified9 Mexican immigrant monolingual English speaker, was 14 years
old at the time of this study. His teachers viewed him as overtly oppositional and sometimes
threatening: He spent most of eighth grade on in-school suspension. He refused to take state
standardized tests and was unwilling to display any form of school-based competencies. During
his hours after school, however, Eddy devoted much of his time to participating in a break
dance company, Hip Hop Underground. After regularly attending ARTES for 4 months, the
program hired him to be their regular break dance instructor for his 11- to 15-year-old primarily
male peers who were identified as “B-Boys.”
As a member both of ARTES and a professional dance community (where he was a student,
not a performer), Eddy functioned as a cultural broker who helped set in motion inbound and
outbound processes. Through inbound processes, he introduced several important repertoire
elements into ARTES from his dance company; through outbound processes, anchored in long-
term mentoring relationships, Eddy helped scaffold the movement of novices from the safe
place of the workshop into new, unfamiliar public performance spaces. In doing so, Eddy took
on the role of mentor or guide in what amounted to transcontextual dyads (Bronfenbrenner,
1979).

8
Consequential recurrent practices is a term developed by Walker (2003), building on the concept of “consequential
progressions” of Putney and colleagues (Putney, Green, Dixon, Durán, & Yeager, 2000), as practices to which ARTES
participants were recurrently exposed over time, which became consequential for the development of meanings and
action within ARTES as well as other contexts. The term is not to be confused with Beach’s (2003) “consequential
transitions,” which he described as transitions that are reflected on and struggled with, ultimately shifting an individual’s
sense of identity.
9
Chicano or Chicana is an identity term used by some persons of Mexican descent living in the United States, with
connotations of ethnic-political consciousness growing out of the Chicano/a political movement of the 1960s and ’70s.
 186 WALKER AND NOCON

As cultural broker, Eddy introduced several repertoire elements from his professional dance
company that became consequential for individual and collective development within ARTES,
and as bridging elements to new contexts. These included disciplined practice, the instructional
format of assisted performance, and performance mentoring, a structure that allowed novices to
execute short break dance performances alongside expert dancers on stage. For example, Eddy
consistently modeled and gave explicit instruction on the need to practice constantly to gain
competence. The students observed Eddy practicing his art with determination and exuberance
in many contexts, in and out of ARTES:

I ran into Eddy doing hand-stands in the fluorescent-lit laundrymat floor, with his brother, after
having carried his dirty clothes to the after school workshop, and from workshop to the laundrymat,
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looking very depressed. In the laundrymat he looked exhilarated and free, his body transgressing,
transforming the space, creating art in a forbidden space. (Walker Field Notes, 02/08/01)

He also insisted that the B-Boys practice in order to be worthy of his mentoring:

Eddy: Well come on if you want me to teach you right. Practice. Practice your freezes.
Practice your top rocks. I on’y wanna teach kids who practice   
Beto: [Does some pretend moves of girls Hip Hop, looking unhappy.]
Guillermo (African American student): [Holding the camera, at an angle]. Alright
Eddy. [Eddy looks at the camera smiling, uses voice of someone being interviewed.
Talks quietly (he is extremely shy)]. If you, if you wanna learn break dancin’ you
gotta practice every, [looks at boys, like he’s a teacher] every day, you know
what I’m sayin’? Don’t just stop. If a mistake gets you, don’t let it get you, don’t
stop, just keep goin’. (Walker Field Notes, 01/12/01)

Recurrent exposure to disciplined practice demonstrated to ARTES youth that dance practice
could, and should be done anywhere, anytime. The novice break dancers were seen appropriating
this practice after having worked with Eddy for a semester. Early in the spring of 2001, the
boys were still reticent and shy about practicing on their own without Eddy. But as time went
on, the boys spent more time practicing and were more willing to do so in public spaces: Note
the movement in Table 1 from the workshop space to public spaces at the television studio and
the trailer park community center.
Continual practice and mentoring had important consequences for the boys’ development
over time. Most of the boys who practiced and worked closely with Eddy were individuals who
did not fit in to the dominant social group of older boys and high status girls in ARTES. The
core group of B-Boys—Juan, Chato, Ronnie, Franky, and Chino—were not interested in poetry
writing or performance. Disciplined practice in break dancing seems to have contributed to a
sense of confidence in themselves—grounded in their bodies—that allowed them to develop
valued roles and identities as the group’s break dancers (“B-Boys”) and to move into new
settings such as the community television station, community centers for open-mic events,
and a public theater in another major city. Some of these boys proved to be among the most
engaged long-term members of ARTES, indicating significant development as members of the
collective.
Juan is a good example. His resolute, disciplined practice and instruction by Eddy created
a foundation from which he reconstructed himself from a marginally participating, awkward,
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 187

TABLE 1
Impromptu Break Dance Practice

Date Location Field Note Data

1/12/01 ARTES workshop Juan looks happy on the floor doing spinning he had learned from Eddy.
1/24/01 ARTES workshop No dance teacher or Eddy today. Boys do breaking in the back of the
cafeteria without him.
3/21/01 BATV studio Grant takes Chato, Juan, Ronnie, and Stephen into the Green Studio
after the introduction to camera use. He points out the monitors and
the studio cameras. The boys notice that they can see themselves in
the monitor. They begin practicing their moves.
4/6/01 San Agustín Community Center Setting up the community center space for YPAN. Boys brought their
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CD’s and are practicing handstands and freezes.

painfully shy boy to one of the core members of the 3rd- and 4th-year ARTES group. This group
undertook projects in radio production, addressing issues of concern to Mexican immigrant youth,
such as a program entitled “Racism in the Schools” that included an invited panel and interviews
with people in the streets of Arapahoe City. In 2005, the summer of his last year of high school,
Juan went to the community access radio station by himself—independent of ARTES—to spend
a day in an intensive summer training program in youth radio. Though he did not stay the duration
of the program, he nevertheless demonstrated his willingness and ability to cross socio-spatial
boundaries that normally separated his Mexican immigrant community from the predominately
White, upper middle-class community and the public facilities that they controlled.
Juan is one example of an individual whose development of competence across contexts
was shaped by Eddy’s role as a cultural broker as well as the mentoring role of the network
of adults who worked with the ARTES program.10 Franky, a long-time mentee of Eddy’s, is
another example. We demonstrate this in describing a critical event in individual and collective
development within ARTES, a Young Poets and Artists Night in a trailer park community
center attended by 146 people. This performance revealed a change in Franky’s identity as a
dancer and member of the ARTES community, when he became a colleague and a partner in
dance with the more expert Eddy.
Performance mentoring was a repertoire element of the Hip Hop Underground dance
company. It is a participatory format in which the novice is encouraged to perform short
break dancing segments alongside a more expert break dancer. In the duet by Franky and
Eddy that night, their performance was assisted and accompanied by the professional MC,
rapper, recording artist, and “Hip Hop educator” Apostle.11 The following transcribed discourse
highlights the assisted performance format provided by Apostle. We see how he supports the
young dancers, calling on the audience to do the same, through both his running narrative of
their performance and his kinesic interaction with them as MC. It is important to note that here
we see evidence of horizontal recontextualization, as Apostle creates a context for an alternate

10
Unless otherwise indicated, the codirectors of ARTES organized boundary-crossing events and physically accom-
panied youth into new contexts.
11
Apostle was also a regular visiting artist to ARTES workshops and accompanied students in other settings outside
the workshop including the university’s Hip Hop Congress, thus functioning as a cultural broker in his own right.
 188 WALKER AND NOCON

realization of the workshop dance activity, while introducing novel elements from the hip-hop
genre practice, MCing:12

Apostle: And layin’ down the grooves and the scratches is my good man Stan Lee and
the Plain1 crew. Give Stan Lee some love y’all. [Eddy comes up to pop and
moon walk, alternates with Franky]
Apostle: Oh oh. Oh oh  .Ah Ah [commenting on Eddy’s dance moves]
Apostle: Oh oh up racket  Freeze, there you go. [commenting on Franky]
Apostle: Old school, old school. Wild style. Wa huh uh. Wooo
[Audience clapping]
Apostle: Old school beat. Take us back to the (  ) Ooohh Ah hah.
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Apostle: Crab walk. Yeah. Hah hah King Tut. Freeze. That’s tight.
Apostle: Go Franky. Woo.
Apostle: Yeah.
[Audience claps after each round. Franky and Eddy come up to do a duet].
Apostle: Ohh Ohhh Circle.
That’s a real old school beat right there. Hah hah hah.
[At the end of their duet, Franky the puppeteer lifts Eddy up as though with
strings, makes him do a spin, flip backwards, and they exit.]
Apostle: Oh Oh. Ha ha ha ha ha    Take a bow, take a bow There you go. Yeah. We got
all kinds of creative expression goin’ on tonight! (Walker Video Transcription,
03/02/01)

What was striking about this performance was the nature of the participatory format and the
interactions between the MC and the dancers, which were strongly relational and improvisa-
tional. The movements and mimes of the dancers—representing a boy being mugged on the
street—were narrativized and affirmed in the “Black rhetorical trope” of “affirmation” (Gates,
1984) by Apostle. The dancers were supported verbally and gesturally by the MC, who stepped
into the performance space, leaning over the dancers, microphone in hand, as though he were part
of, while commenting on, the spectacle. In this way, the event simultaneously connected Franky
to the local practices (performance mentoring) of a professional hip-hop dance company as well
as to the global network of practices that together constituted the cultural world of hip-hop.
This critical event, together with others over time, demonstrate how the novice break dancers and
more expert mentor Eddy were able to define a new area of competence and to construct themselves
as individuals with clear roles and an increasingly valued identity within the community. The
transcontextual network of adults and more capable mentors with access to related constellations of
practice provided Eddy and the B-Boys and girls with opportunities to participate in new contexts
with new repertoire elements. It is important to note that these boundary-crossing opportunities
included repeated exposure to mature practice. In the performance described here, the presence of
the professional MC and DJ, the language, the music, the movements, the artifacts, the participant
structure, the interactions, and the audience all contributed to creating an authentic setting that
transformed the meanings of the actions and the identities of the dancers from novices who only

12
MC stands for “master of ceremonies,” though in the world of hip-hop, “MCing” means the art of rapping. Early
rappers served as hosts to dance parties.
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 189

practice with a boom box, to B-Boys who perform with a live MC and DJ. The context created
in this setting made the actions no longer appear to be a simulation or a practice but rather true
participation in dimensions of mature practice themselves.

HEDI AND THE COALITION: COLLECTIVE CULTURAL

BROKERING

In the case of Eddy and the B-Boys, Eddy acted as a cultural broker who brought into the open
structure of ARTES elements of popular youth culture and the repertoire of the dance company in
which he was a student. This process, as well as Eddy’s emergent role as transcontextual mentor
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and boundary-crossing guide, was supported by a network of adults who also linked the practices
in which Eddy and the B-Boys participated to networks of mature practice. In the case of Heidi,
which follows, the Technology Club was part of a network in which space, programming,
and artifacts were more salient and consciously articulated through the work of a coalition of
people and the institutions they represented. The coalition acted as a collective cultural broker,
supporting the movement of children as they crossed the boundaries between related informal
and formal education contexts. A shared philosophy that welcomed children’s contributions
with expectations of their competent participation was also a key element. In Heidi’s case, the
competence she developed in the practices of the Tech Club as well as the linkages supporting
horizontal recontextualization of that competence, contributed to inbound and outbound
processes through which she came to competently guide others and contribute to the design of
related learning environments as she moved with confidence across contextual boundaries.
Heidi was referred to the Technology Club after-school program by the school’s resource
teacher in February 1996. The specific reasons were not discussed; however, Heidi, who was
repeating second grade, was vocally unhappy about that. Heidi was a graduate of Head Start and
one of the very few low-income Anglo children in Coast Town or the surrounding communities.
She was verbal and outgoing and quickly amazed the older children and adults by developing
Hyper Studio™ presentations. She soon became the Technology Club’s Hyper Studio expert,
helping fifth and sixth graders with their presentations. Heidi’s competence in guiding others
also developed rapidly.
Heidi’s father comes to get her everyday. At first he came in and hovered. Now he regularly sits
and interacts with her and the university students.    Heidi surprised her adult guide and the 6th
graders on Thurs. by pulling up a Hyper Studio stack and making a card with buttons in 15 minutes.
Then she got her dad to add to it. (Nocon Field Notes, 05/16/96)

In spite of having been retained in grade, Heidi quickly understood the goals of the club and
by the end of February 1997 had gained expertise in 20 educational computer programs and
written a story about the mystical origins of the computer club. She continued to attend until
the program shut down in June 1999, guiding the new or younger children and interacting with
the adults with confidence.
The Technology Club was part of a network of programs supported by a Community
Coalition made up of teachers, youth workers, university researchers, and community volunteers
as well as institutions represented by these individuals.13 The individuals and institutions came

13
For a description of the Community Coalition, see Nocon (2004).
 190 WALKER AND NOCON

together to leverage resources in support of children from affluent Coast Town’s low-income
households. The coalition formed a network represented by institutional spaces in Coast Town
as well as complementary programming within those spaces. The designs of the informal
learning environments, which were located in schools, a Head Start classroom, and the local
branch of the Kids Club were also linked by a shared philosophy of focusing on the strengths
and potentials of diverse children. Similarly, the programming was also linked by the shared
use of computers and new technologies to provide informal play and learning opportunities and
practice with academic content.
The coalition acted as a collective cultural broker for Heidi. Because each of the diverse
networked program sites valued Heidi’s computer skills and identified her as a competent
member or potential member, she was able to move between the contexts while drawing on the
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skills and competencies she developed in the Technology Club. She first moved to a similar
program, the Fifth Dimension at the Kids Club, which she visited when the Technology Club
was not in session and continued to visit after the Technology Club had closed. In the next
field note excerpt, an undergraduate guide reports on Heidi’s computer skills and assistance to
another child in playing an educational computer game.

Janet listened to the instructions and just as we began the game Heidi joined us. Heidi knew how
to play the game already and commented, “let’s sell lemonade.” (In the marketplace, selling apples
represents the beginner level where the only manipulation involves price setting. As you advance,
you get up to selling lemonade, where you must manipulate several factors.) I told Heidi that Janet
and I had never played, so we were starting with apples. Heidi sat down and just began playing. She’d
suggest/tell Janet what price to sell the apples for. Janet usually went along with whatever Heidi
suggested. Heidi did a much better job of getting Janet to understand than I did. Heidi went through
the game rather fast, so I tried to stop her and read what was on the screen so Janet could follow, but
I was successful only half the time. Nonetheless, Janet seemed to perform much better by observing
Heidi repeating the steps than by having them explained to her. (JD1 field note, October 6, 1996)

Heidi also began participating in a homework club developed by the coalition and run by
her school. In the homework club, Heidi had more time, space, and support for the reading she
had professed to dislike and regularly avoided in the Technology Club.

Heidi was reading, and I noticed that Pam had set up a reading chart on the wall. The kids all had
their names on the chart and they got to put a mark by their name for every chapter of a book
that they had read. I believe that Heidi was in the lead. Heidi was intently reading Roal Dahl’s
“Matilda.” I read that book when I was younger and enjoyed it tremendously. When she eventually
finished the book I asked her if she liked it. She responded by saying that she enjoyed it, but that
Dahl spent too much of his time leading up to the climax of the book. She would have liked the
torture of the teacher to have happened much sooner in the book so that she could have enjoyed it
longer. (MA Field Notes, 10/29/01)

Because the Homework Club was part of a network in which Heidi was regarded as a child
computer expert, her identity in that para-scholastic setting was not one (or only one) of failure,
that is, determined by her earlier retention in grade or continuing difficulties with reading. Also,
in the Technology Club, the Homework Club, and the other Coalition supported after-school
programs, the children were encouraged to communicate their concerns, dislikes, problems,
and suggestions for change openly but productively. In essence, resistance was engaged and
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 191

negotiated as children gained voice and participated in the ongoing redesign of the programs.14
Evidence of voice can be seen in Heidi’s reaction to the book she had read. It was also evident
in the Fifth Dimension, where she and another member entered into a letter writing campaign
to get a game that had been removed returned. In that process, the two youngsters were
required to formulate an argument for the educational value of the game and its return to the
program.
Heidi’s social skills and ability to guide learning developed in and between the contexts
sponsored by the coalition. In the following excerpt from the Fifth Dimension, an undergraduate
student reports on what occurred after Heidi invited her to play the math logic game, Mancala:

Once the rules had been set straight by Heidi, we started the game. Heidi went first. She explained
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to me as she went exactly what she was doing, pointing out that the first person to go usually
has the longest turn the first time around. She collected several marbles on her first turn while I
watched her in awe manipulating the board. I asked if where she had started was often her first
move of the game. She said that most of the time it was. I told her it looked like a really good
move. She said what she wanted to work on most was her speed—she wanted to get faster. I asked
her if she would take it slow on me at least the first time because I wanted to be able to understand
the game. She complied with my request. So on my turn, Heidi helped me by pointing out the “best
move.” She watched me carefully to make sure that I didn’t mess up, and she was really patient in
waiting for me to decide what I should do. (MM Field Notes, 01/22/01)

The competencies in game play and guidance of others that Heidi had demonstrated nearly
5 years earlier with her father in the Technology Club are evident in the previous excerpt
from the Fifth Dimension. These and other competencies related to technology and guidance
of others were also demonstrated in other Kids Club arenas such as the art room and the Teen
Club. Heidi successfully negotiated both elementary and middle school (through Grade 8) after
which time we lost contact due to Nocon’s relocation. Heidi’s successful participation in these
contexts was “brokered” by the coalition, which formed a network in support of Heidi and
other diverse children who were highly competent but came from circumstances inconsistent
with those of Coast Town’s more affluent and mainstream homes, to which they were often
labeled at the school as “those kids” who were “less competent” and did not belong.

CONCLUSION

To elaborate a framework for conceptualizing the development of boundary-crossing compe-

tence, we have presented two cases that highlight boundary processes involving cultural brokers
that supported competent participation across multiple contexts in ways that are consistent with
Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) transcontextual dyads or networks, which he suggested were important
for helping socially and academically marginalized young people move into and negotiate new
contexts. However, the cases presented here are based not on parent–child relations but on
flexible, guide-novice relations based in informal education environments.
In the case of Eddy and the B-Boys, identities of competence—supported by strong mentoring
relationships—assisted the young dancers in moving from a known, comfortable environment

14
See (Nocon, 2005) for more on designing for productive resistance.
 192 WALKER AND NOCON

where they could take risks while gaining mastery, to recontextualize their performances in less
familiar settings where the risks and challenges were real. With input from and connections
to professional dance communities of practice, ARTES served as an incubator for learning
and a springboard for movement into new contexts. Over time, the acquisition of new skills
along with publicly recognized accomplishment helped strengthen youth investment in, and
identification with, the ARTES program, which members viewed as a place where they could
develop “youth cultural capital” related to popular culture that could be deployed in navigating
the mainstream waters of U.S. society.
In the case of Heidi and the Community Coalition, the coalition, through looser and more
distributed mentoring relationships, assisted a marginalized child in developing an identity
of a competent technology mentor. As such, she moved across boundaries, recontextualizing
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both her technology and guidance competencies. Within and across the boundaries of new but
related contexts, Heidi engaged with other children and adults, entering into dialogue about her
reading, running for office in the Kids Club, and asking university students about college life
and admissions. In the process of acquiring boundary-crossing competence, Heidi contributed
to the development of the coalition-sponsored programs and to that of individual participants
in her roles as both novice and cultural broker.
In theorizing the processes involved in developing boundary-crossing competence, we have
diverged somewhat from previous theorists and believe that we contribute new insights in doing
so. First, based on findings from our long-term qualitative research, we conceptualize cultural
brokers as contributing to cross-boundary processes in two important ways: through inbound
processes, introducing external repertoire elements into a community, and outbound processes,
scaffolding the movement of artifacts, people, and their practices outward across boundaries
into new contexts. In this article we use the examples of a middle school dance mentor and a
community coalition as cultural brokers who link different contexts.
In terms of vertical recontextualization, we diverged somewhat from Van Oers’s (1998)
assertion that this form of recontextualization necessarily leads to ever-higher levels abstraction.
In examples of vertical recontextualization from our own research, we found evidence not of
greater abstraction but rather of transformation and new forms of related activity, with greater
or lesser affordances for developing competent participation. As Tuomi-Gröhn and Engeström
(2003) noted, “the affordances that enable our activities are properties of artifacts that have been
designed so that those activities can be supported. The functions of these properties are shaped by
social practices” (p. 25). These historical social relations contributed to certain venues or activity
settings being more or less welcoming to youth from nondominant social groups. An example
from our research was the break dancing among peers in a middle school cafeteria after school
as a form of practice, versus break dancing among Latino students on a university campus as part
of a Hip Hop Congress, or for an audience of family members, friends, and the general public in
a trailer park community center. Each activity setting, or system, had a related though different
object, set of meanings, people, spatial arrangements, artifacts, and ways of participating, which
created a new context. In the process of moving across social and cultural boundaries, Heidi and the
B-Boys experienced being competent in different contexts. Simultaneously, their ease in moving
between contexts grew. The B-Boys came to understand the relationship between break dancing,
hip-hop, MCing, and African American genre practices as “affirmation.” They also came to under-
stand that youth and young adults participated in hip-hop social practices at universities and at
community access radio and television stations and that the practices crossed ethnic, national,
 BOUNDARY-CROSSING COMPETENCE 193

and class boundaries. They were exposed to professions in which the knowledge and skills based
in hip-hop culture and technology could be leveraged for successful mainstream careers. Finally,
though well aware that people made careers and sometimes extraordinary amounts of money
in the world of hip-hop, they also learned that individuals and groups engage hip-hop social
practices for purposes of social change and youth empowerment.
In terms of individual development, it can be said that the B-Boys came to “re-mediate”
themselves in the context of ARTES and its network of related practices, and perhaps other
contexts such as school as well. Building on their competence in dance, over time they extended
their competencies into new domains of activity such as community access radio and television
production. In this sense it could be argued that competence itself was recontextualized through
continuous alternative realizations of identity construction across multiple contexts.
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Similarly, in the case of Heidi, each new physical context into which she crossed represented
a new activity with a different, but related, set of meanings, people, spatial arrangements,
artifacts, and ways of participating. As she crossed the boundaries into these new contexts,
a process brokered collectively for her and other participants by the coalition, she was both
a receiving and contributing producer of inbound and outbound processes. As in the case of
Eddy and the B-Boys, Heidi came to remediate herself as she recontextualized her competence
and contributed to development in the new contexts into which she crossed. In her case, the
cumulative effect of competent participation in multiple contexts in which she was exposed to
less defined and more distributed forms of mature practice. For example, the ongoing devel-
opment of informal learning contexts with open structures that supported self-paced individual
interaction with artifacts in a loosely organized collective led to engagement in discussion of her
personal potential and future possibilities in contexts, like college, that were outside the coalition
programs but linked by persons and practices that shared the spaces and related repertoires.
In conclusion, we propose that the development of boundary-crossing competence has signif-
icant implications for marginalized youth and children for whom cultural and institutional
boundaries are far too often insurmountable barriers. Although we have drawn on only two cases
in this study, they are representative of numerous others within the two different contexts in
which we conducted our research. Although substantially different in design, location, and target
populations, both learning environments supported the development of identities of boundary-
crossing competence by connecting related constellations of practice, providing opportunities
for novices to connect to larger networks of expertise and mature practice while providing them
with opportunities to participate in expanded, horizontal—rather than hierarchal—systems that
effectively recontextualized their competencies. The key elements the two programs shared
were networks of transcontextual mentors and complex artifacts that connected related practices
across boundaries. The openness to transformation in both programs appears to have supported
recontextualization and the development of boundary-crossing competence.

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