#1176: Knowledge in New Pieces: How do Material Culture, Object Ecosystems, and Intuitive Knowledge Shape Children’s Cognition?

Young people today grow up immersed in interconnected technological, social, and natural systems that shape how they construct knowledge. Digital environments nurture intuitive understandings—such as perceiving exponential growth through everyday experiences with social media virality. Grounded in the Knowledge-in-Pieces (KiP) framework, which views cognition as composed of context-sensitive p-prims, this study extends KiP to contemporary, digitally mediated learning contexts. Our analysis situates these technology-informed intuitions within broader trajectories of conceptual development in mathematics and complex systems thinking, illustrating how youth’s lived experiences with contemporary technologies can provide powerful entry points for formal learning of advanced topics in mathematics and science.