Maker-Centered Learning

Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds

Edward P. Clapp, Jessica Ross, Jennifer O. Ryan, Shari Tishman

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119263661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The Agency by Design guide to implementing maker-centered teaching and learning

Maker-Centered Learning provides both a theoretical framework and practical resources for the educators, curriculum developers, librarians, administrators, and parents navigating this burgeoning field. Written by the expert team from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard's Project Zero, this book

• Identifies a set of educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the focal concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design.
• Shares cutting edge research that provides evidence of the benefits of maker-centered learning for students and education as a whole.
• Presents a clear Project Zero-based framework for maker-centered teaching and learning
• Includes valuable educator resources that can be applied in a variety of design and maker-centered learning environments
• Describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity.

A surge of voices from government, industry, and education have argued that, in order to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning in various educational environments. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what that means, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere that learning takes place.

Chapter 1
Exploring the Benefits of Maker-Centered Learning

When the Agency by Design research project got under way in 2012, the buzz around the maker movement was on the rise, and discussions about the benefits of maker-centered learning were beginning to mount. New to this domain ourselves, our first instinct was to turn to the hundreds of short articles about the maker movement and maker-centered learning appearing in the popular press to gain a better understanding of the proposed benefits and outcomes of this new educational trend.¹ With titles like “School for Hackers,” “Makerspaces in Libraries, Education, and Beyond,” “Maker Spaces and the Learning Commons,” and “DIY or Die: Why We Need to Teach Kids Practical Skills,” the articles we reviewed discussed the application of maker-centered learning in a variety of settings—ranging from traditional classrooms to public libraries and from rural barns to the hallowed halls of the White House.²

Although each of these articles had its own way of talking about the promises of maker-centered learning, two prevailing narratives became evident. The first made the economic argument that maker-centered learning, and the broader maker movement, had the potential to reinvigorate the American economy and incite the next industrial revolution.^{3, 4} This narrative suggested that participating in the maker movement may help foster the development of an anticonsumerist, do-it-yourself mind-set on an individual level and spawn a wave of innovation and entrepreneurialism. On a more global level, the economic storyline further suggested that, through the use of new tools and technologies (particularly 3-D printers) and the adoption of an open-source culture, the maker movement also had the potential to entirely redefine contemporary corporate and manufacturing practices.

As powerful as this economic narrative was, all of this talk of anticonsumerism, economic growth, and disrupting corporate models began to feel a long way away from the tangible experiences of teaching and learning. So as we continued to review articles in the popular press, we listened closely for an underlying educational narrative as well. We heard it: This one had two primary strands. The first strand picked up on popular rhetoric advocating for the importance of teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by suggesting that maker-centered learning experiences have the potential to increase young people's proficiency in the STEM subjects.

Many advocates for developing the STEM proficiencies of young people through maker-centered learning experiences have rooted their arguments in alarmist cries from educational pundits and reformers who suggest that U.S. schools are failing to provide young people with the STEM learning experiences they need. These advocates further suggest that traditional textbook-based approaches to STEM learning are boring and uninteresting to young people. As noted by Margaret Honey, president and chief executive officer of the New York Hall of Science, “Marrying the passion, creativity, and engagement of the maker movement to educational opportunities that exist in formal and informal settings is the injection that STEM learning needs.”⁵

Adding a sense of urgency to this message were reports that U.S. students lag behind other countries on standardized tests of STEM subjects and that there is a lack of young people pursuing higher education degrees in STEM content areas.^{6, 7} A recent report from the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology further stated that “the problem is not just a lack of proficiency among American students; there is also a lack of interest in STEM fields among many students.”⁸ So the second strand of the education argument makes the case that by engaging in maker-centered learning experiences—and in turn developing increased proficiency in the STEM subjects—young people are more likely to develop an interest in pursuing careers in the STEM fields. The educational narrative therefore circles back to the economic narrative by suggesting that supporting more students interested in the STEM professions today will help grow the American economy tomorrow.

These two narratives fit together neatly. Yet, despite their complementarity, we continued to feel that something was missing. Based on our early experiences visiting maker-centered classrooms and witnessing the vibrant teaching and learning going on within these spaces, we sensed that there was more to the story.

Learning from Maker Educators and Thought Leaders

Since almost the very beginning of our work as a research team, we have been offering workshops for educators and school leaders in which we share our ideas and build knowledge together with our workshop participants. When working with these professionals, we have often started such sessions with a thought experiment that goes like this: First, we ask our workshop participants to think quietly to themselves for a moment, identifying a memorable making experience from their past. After our participants have had a chance to orient themselves to such an experience, we then ask them to turn to a neighbor and discuss their memorable making experiences. After several minutes of lively conversation, participants share what they have discussed. Naturally, there is a great range of things people identify as being memorable about their past making experiences. Some popular responses include working closely with a family member or friend, figuring out the solution to a difficult dilemma, engaging in a real-world problem, or making something that was meaningful to oneself or one's community. So far, none of our workshop participants have described their most memorable making experiences in terms of reconceptualizing the economy or increasing their proficiencies in the STEM subjects.

The responses we have heard in these sessions have supported our skepticism about the rhetoric in much of the popular press. When we consider the benefits and outcomes of maker-centered learning on a human scale, we find that they are far more personal—and far more interesting—than the predominant economic and educational narratives suggest. So to gain a better understanding of the real benefits and outcomes associated with maker-centered learning, we decided we needed to ask the people who engaged in this work each day what they saw as the promises of this growing educational trend.

Our first core research question thus came into focus: How do maker educators and leaders in the field think about the benefits and outcomes of maker-centered learning experiences? To pursue an answer to this question, we interviewed a variety of maker educators and thought leaders from around the country to learn from their experiences and unique perspectives. (See Appendix A for a complete list.) Not surprisingly, our interviews yielded an impressive amount of data, which we carefully analyzed with the help of the many graduate research assistants we have had the pleasure to work with throughout this project.⁹ We now turn to a discussion of the findings from this strand of inquiry.

Identifying the Real Benefits of Maker-Centered Learning

Just as our workshop participants identified maker memories that extended far beyond the economic and educational narratives prevailing in the popular press, the educators and thought leaders we spoke with talked of the promises of maker-centered learning as being greater than the media suggested. To be sure, these individuals mentioned proficiency in the STEM subjects as being a part of their work with young people, and naturally they wanted their students to be successful participants in the future economy. But as important as these outcomes may have been, they clearly were seen as being either instrumental or peripheral to greater learning objectives. Ultimately, we understood that the educators and thought leaders we spoke with discussed the outcomes of maker-centered learning primarily in terms of developing agency and building character. Agency and character can loosely be understood as being on a spectrum, on which one end is character building, or establishing a sense of self in a complex world, and the other end is developing agency, or activating one's character to uniquely shape one's world. The following section provides an explanation of these two primary outcomes. After that, we turn to the secondary outcomes our maker educators mentioned—outcomes that have to do with discipline-specific knowledge and skills, and maker-specific knowledge and skills. Although the primary outcomes of agency and character seem separate from the secondary outcomes of discipline- and maker-specific knowledge and skills, the two sets of outcomes are actually closely linked.

Understanding the Primary Outcomes of Maker-Centered Learning: Developing Agency and Building Character

Beyond cognitive capacities, maker-centered learning outcomes such as agency and character are dispositional in nature. They emphasize the propensity to see and engage with the world from the vantage point of a particular perspective rather than the acquisition of specific skills or proficiencies.

Developing Agency

One of the primary outcomes of maker-centered learning mentioned by all participants in our study—and talked about with passion—had to do with helping young people develop an I-can-do-it attitude. We have interpreted this can-do spirit as a sense of agency.¹⁰

Agency is a concept that is central to the eponymously named Agency by Design project and also to theories of human nature and development more broadly. In Chapter Three we explore the philosophical and psychological dimensions of the concept of human agency in more depth, but here we offer this simple definition: Having a sense of agency means feeling empowered to make choices about how to act in the world. In the context of maker-centered learning, agency has to do with action-based choices related to making. As such, agency, like character, can be understood as a disposition—seeing oneself as an agent of change within the designed environs of one's world.

The obvious connection between this conceptualization of agency and maker-centered learning concerns just what our interviewees pointed out—helping students develop an I-can-do-it orientation toward making tangible objects. Although the educators we spoke with did make this connectio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Exploring the Benefits of Maker-Centered Learning
• Chapter 2: Teaching and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom
• Chapter 3: Developing a Sense of Maker Empowerment
• Chapter 4: Developing a Sensitivity to Design
• Chapter 5: Maker-Centered Teaching and Learning in Action
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Appendix A: Overview of interview participants
• Appendix B: Thinking Routines
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors
• Thinking and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom
• End User License Agreement