Title: Maker Movement in K-12 Education: Leveraging Practices and Addressing Disparities
Author Name: Liz Chavarria
1. Introduction
Photo credit: Digital Harbor Foundation
“Broadly speaking, the maker movement is characterized by people who engage in the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of physical artifacts, and who share both the process of making and their physical products with the broader community of makers.” (Cohen, Jones, Smith, & Calandra, 2017)
As makerspaces, making, and the maker movement become popularized in K-12 classrooms teacher education programs are including it into their program design. The future of education is a student-centered or, rather, a maker-centered one. Teacher-centered instruction, although necessary in some situations, is not always the correct teaching approach and is often the default in many public-school settings. An incorrectly used teaching approach may be detrimental to student learning. “The ‘maker’ movement focuses on providing a design space for K–12 students to use computer programming, electronics, 3-D printers, robotics, and other technologies/materials to create a variety of products.” (Reiser, 2018) As more research comes to light showcasing the positive outcomes of adding these maker elements into the classrooms, the maker movement in K-12 environments is beginning to gain steam.
This chapter in this e-book will cover how K-12 educators can leverage makerspace technologies and practices to grow student self-efficacy, how educators incorporated maker pedagogies into existing curriculum in a classroom environment, and how the digital divide is affecting underserved communities.
2. Overview of the Case
We will be exploring the K-12 public school setting with a state standard curriculum. We will also be looking at specific low socioeconomic communities who are falling behind in the digital divide that could benefit from the same maker-centered instruction.
As more and more literature regarding makerspaces in K-12 schools becomes available, maker technologies and student-centered learning practices are becoming the standard in public education. Increasing amounts of research are focused on how these pedagogies can increase student self-efficacy while incorporating it into the existing curriculum in a classroom environment. Technologies in the classroom play a critical role in an education environment, and as maker technologies also become critical learning objectives underserved communities are falling even further into the digital divide.
While navigating the standardized testing structure can be difficult, it is possible to simultaneously provide a learning environment that nurtures student’s creativity and still meet learning objectives. Individual student dynamics should be watched a bit more closely due to the dependency of student-centered learning on fellow students to complete coursework. Additionally, the lack of technology in some home environments should be considered when crafting a new curriculum. Students may be unable to complete homework, have some feelings of inadequacies compared to their peers, and may give some push back to some activities that involve their own ability to create something.
3. Solutions Implemented
Studies have shown that student self-esteem or self-concept directly affects academic performance. (Page, 2002) For this reason, educators are looking at how they can leverage a more maker-centered curriculum to grow student self-efficacy. In a student-centered approach, students engage in creating ideas, plan collaboratively with each other, and are able to extend their normal roles with teachers and peers. These activities can translate into valuable learning opportunities. In the study, Agency in the Making, researchers analyze the emergence of transformative agency through the implementation of makerspaces in school environments. Their findings shed light on the role of digitally enhanced learning environments as promotional space for teachers and students. Three broad indications of transformative agency trended throughout the study included deviating, switching, and transfiguring. When students deviated they would first express criticism, frustration, and/or dissatisfaction toward instructions or other actions. They would then voice intention to depart from those instructions and to act in another way, typically making something more meaningful to them. Students use switching to reduce tensions, feelings of frustration, and dissatisfaction by using creative initiatives and actions to overcome difficult obstacles while making. Transfiguring is communicated when expressions and actions change direction quite radically toward a shared object within the makerspace. (Kajamaa & Kumpulainen, 2019) In Make-Her-Spaces as Hybrid Places instructors used the relationship between designing artifacts and self-esteem to give Latina and African American young women a means to express themselves through a hands-on design challenge.
It has been long established that teachers should let students learn on their own and from their peers in a process that provides intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Tools, such as the Flanders-based interaction analysis are used to determine how and if students are allowed participatory roles in their own education and how this type of engagement may affect outcomes. (Page, 2002) Maker-centered learning uses similar teaching principles, such as constructionism and constructivism. The element that ties them all together is making. Adding a student-centered approach makes hands-on learning all the more effective. Integrating elements of making into formal educational settings requires a thoughtful framework. “…We define makification as the process of taking characteristic elements from the maker movement and infusing them into formal educational activities in a variety of contexts. … Pure constructionism needs freedom and minimal restrictions (standardized regulations), which is difficult to come by in today’s climate of crowded curricula and high-stakes testing.” (Cohen, Jones, Smith, & Calandra, 2017) According to Cohen, to successfully intergrade making into formal learning the activities used cannot just be add-on activities. To illustrate the observational differences between types of projects that can be used in learning environments, Cohen mapped the paradigms between deliberate learning goals and playful/serendipitous learning goals, as well as where those activities fall in between private process and shared/collaborative process (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Observational differences between “makification” activities and maker-related activities.
Instructors are more likely to integrate new technologies and practices if they have relevant technological knowledge (training), a good self-efficacy to teach the technology, and an overall teaching belief that values technology. Leveraging student-centered learning in these applications works to dismantle the typical classroom hierarchies and positions the students as designers of the classroom space. In a study that looked at finding ways to support the equitable engagement of youth repertoires of practice in a high school makerspace, researchers stated, “We positioned ourselves as collaborators when possible, pitching in on tedious tasks, asking students for advice on our own project work, and participating in playful community-building activities. Across the years, we co-taught the class with a teacher at the high school, leading activities and making decisions jointly. Over time, we invited more youth leadership into activities like peer teaching, leading morning circle time, or leading more formal workshops.” (Martin, Dixon, & Betser, 2018) Allowing students to build agency and to innovate within these projects is critical to giving students an opportunity to become successful later in life. A student’s day to day learning environment can affect the outcome of their future career and success.
The digital divide has over time influenced many underlying socioeconomic causes. (Cohron, 2015) Today, the divide not only includes lack of technology, such as personal computers or modems, but lack of broadband accessibility and low digital literacy. “The definition of access now includes the accessibility of the locations of the technology, the availability of complementary technologies (such as software), the explosion of mobile technology, and the personal skills students possess to understand and use the technology. In addition, students’ access to technology at home and the ways they use technology outside of school appear to be disconnected to their access to, and use of, technology in school.” (Dolan, 2015) Many students in low socioeconomic households are already twice disadvantaged due to fewer learning opportunities as well as a lack of technology in their homes or having consistent connectivity to internet services. The recent boom in makerspace resources in many school environments will add to the ever-increasing divide. The cost to catch up or the loss of never having an opportunity to learn these valuable skills in a demanding job market is even more detrimental to a student’s future success. “Digitally disadvantaged workers and entrepreneurs face barriers to full participation in the economy their more digitally advantaged peers do not confront. … Just as many individuals who use the internet more intensively and in more skillful ways tend to earn more money once employed, they also stand a better chance of securing employment.” (Robinson, et al., 2015)
4. Outcomes
Many of the outcomes of using makerspace technology and pedagogies were a positive influence on the students. The few disconnects were excellent learning opportunities for the instructors to expand and tailor their processes around the student’s needs.
In Agency in the Making, researchers noted that students would adjust or reposition themselves by either deviating, switching, or transfiguring. “The [sessions] illustrates the emergence of transformative agency is a process triggered by multiple tensions in the socially and materially mediated interaction.” (Kajamaa & Kumpulainen, 2019) Some group tension is necessary to be somewhat of a catalyst for discussion and critical thinking. When a student deviates from the teacher’s instructions it is their desire to accomplish the challenge in a creative and independent way. “Silja’s independent, creative (nondiscursive) act of trying out a new solution can be seen as an important agentive act and a deviation, not only from the teachers’ instructions, but also from the suggestions made by her peers.” (Kajamaa & Kumpulainen, 2019) Although deviating helped the student build her own agency it did not aid group discourse. In switching, a student moves from singular actions to being led by individual students who are guided by collective motivation. “In this challenge, instead of asking the teacher, who had been the core resource for the group during the first session, Oona and Peppi relied on their peer Miina, leading to positive experiences, starting to switch the design and making activity from teacher-instructed to student-driven.” (Kajamaa & Kumpulainen, 2019) In this case, the instructor was adaptable and allowed the students to explore the project on their own. In the following session, the students took more time to collectively consider and negotiate their next activity. “They started to follow their own ideas and ways of working, changing the direction of the activity further toward the interest-driven form. … They also all engaged in the creative re-designing of the challenge (creating multiple wonderful designs in a relatively short time period). … Transfiguring their activity toward a shared object increased its interest-driveness, legitimizing and sustaining the role of the students as a group of ‘real designers’, capable of acting without well-defined instructions.” (Kajamaa & Kumpulainen, 2019) Those students who initially did not speak up were now participating and leading. Students that at first wanted to work independently and without discussion from the group began listening and following their peers. At the end of the sessions, the students finally found the right balance to work with one another.
Using the hands-on design challenge in Make-Her-Spaces as Hybrid Places did not have the outcome that instructors intended. “Ideally the process would assist them in the development of self-confidence and enable them to present and share their creations with their peers. However, social constructions and the need for privacy overshadowed their willingness to design and their need to share their designs.” (Norris, 2014) These students came from urban environments, most with troubled home lives. Although the purpose was to impart positive self-concepts, many of these students would share instead negative self-concepts that had been appropriated from social constructions. “Rather than assuming that the young women were not ready to learn, this work reveals that they were not ready to unlearn. That is, these young women had already learned what it meant to be constructed.” (Norris, 2014) In this case, the instructors underestimated student’s reception of what the project was actually asking of them. Making can be an excellent way to approach student’s expressing trauma or negative emotions, however it should not be a forced project and students should be given alternatives to participating. Iterative Design toward Equity is an excellent example of instructors adapting to their students. “It took time to see greater breadth in students’ repertoires of practice for making. We also needed to contend with how our positionality, in race, class, and power, shaped how young people encountered us, and what it takes to disrupt hierarchies wrapped up in research, schooling, and making.” (Martin, Dixon, & Betser, 2018)
In a study that linked exposure to innovation in early childhood to later becoming an inventor, “[the] result suggests that becoming an inventor in America relies on two traits: having high inventive ability (as proxied for by math test scores early in childhood) and being born into a high-income family.” (Bell, Chetty, Jaravel, Petkova, & Reenen, revised 2019) Although access to innovation is important, the study also pointed out that innovative environments need to also be paired with mentoring and networking (e.g., through internships) for children to pursue certain career paths. Community-based workshop spaces are independently operated and are driven be the need to provide their community access to these technologies. Called makerspaces, hackerspaces, or FabLabs there is an increase demand for these workspaces for all age groups. “They provide a range of equipment and materials that people – makers – can use to make things. Most makerspaces are either free or very affordable, and the only entry requirement is to be respectful of the space and others using it.” (Mazzilli-Daechsel, 2019) A growing number of libraries are working to copy these models to meet the needs of emerging digital disparities and to change the current problematic economic stratification construct. “More broadly, our findings suggest that policies designed to increase intergenerational mobility may also be beneficial for increasing economic growth. Drawing more low-income and minority children into science and innovation could increase their incomes – thereby reducing the persistence of inequality across generations – while stimulating growth by harnessing currently under-utilized talent.” (Bell, Chetty, Jaravel, Petkova, & Reenen, revised 2019)
5. Implications
The impact that making and student-centered learning has on individuals is overwhelmingly positive. By thoughtfully incorporating maker pedagogies into curriculum, instructors can grow student self-efficacy. Maker education is on the rise in schools that can afford to bring these technologies into the classroom. However, understanding the differences in underserved communities and the importance of how to bridge the digital divide in low socioeconomic areas is vital to support disadvantaged students.
References
Bell, A., Chetty, R., Jaravel, X., Petkova, N., & Reenen, J. V. (November 2017, revised January 2019). Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation. National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w24062
Cohen, J. (2017). Maker Principles and Technologies in Teacher Education: A National Survey. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 25(1), 5-30. Retrieved from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/172304/
Cohen, J., Jones, W., Smith, S., & Calandra, B. (2017). Makification: Towards a Framework for Leveraging the Maker Movement in Formal Education. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 26(3), 217-229.
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Mazzilli-Daechsel, S. (2019). Simondon and the maker movement. Culture, Theory and Critique, 60(3-4), 237-249. doi:10.1080/14735784.2019.1667254
Norris, A. (2014). Make-Her-Spaces as Hybrid Places: Designing and Resisting Self Constructions in Urban Classrooms. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(1), 63-77. doi:10.1080/10665684.2014.866879
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Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Enhancing Instruction with Technology. In Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (Fourth Edition ed., Vol. Digital, Ser. 9780134237015). Pearson.
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