Epistemic roles of materiality within a collaborative invention project at a secondary school

Abstract

In this study, we examined maker‐centred learning from an epistemic perspective, highlighting the agentic role of material engagement and artefacts in learning and creativity. The use of physical materials plays a crucial role in maker activities where the socio‐epistemic aspects of knowledge creation entangle with the designing and making of physical artefacts. By taking a case study perspective, we analysed video data from nine design sessions involving a team of students (aged 13 to 14) developing an invention. First, we analysed knowledge that was built during the process. Our analysis revealed how design ideas evolved from preliminary to final stages and, together with the expressed design problems and conversations preceding the ideas, formed an epistemic object pursued by the team. Next, we included non‐human agencies into the analysis to understand the role of materials in the process. Features of materials and human design intentions both constrained and enabled idea improvement and knowledge creation, intermixing meanings and materials. Material making invited the students to not only rely on human rationalisation, but also to think together with the materials.

Bringing maker practices to school: tracing discursive and materially mediated aspects of student teams’ collaborative making processes

“…The present process visualizations enable portrayals of the temporal and dynamic trajectories of collaborative making processes (Hmelo-Silver et al 2008;Lehesvuori, Viiri, Rasku-Puttonen, Moate and Helaakoski 2013) and the epistemic objects being pursued. The specific advantage of the Making-Process-Rug method is simultaneous tracing of social-discursive and materially embodied aspects of maker-centered learning to analytically capture the sociomaterial entanglement of making processes (Mehto et al 2020). For example, how conceptual and materially embodied aspects of knowledge creation interlink during co-invention processes.…”

“…Depending on the focus of the study, the zooming in can also focus, for example, on teachers' scaffolding activities within the teams. In our related studies, we have zoomed in on the epistemic role of materiality in the invention process (Mehto et al 2020). We have also tracked the participatory actions and detected the relevant materials involved in these actions (Mehto, Riikonen, Kangas and Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, in press).…”

“…Hence, materially mediated activity appears to play a crucial agentic role in collaborative knowledge creation. The material aspects seem to intertwine with discursive activities without being reducible to the latter (Mehto et al, 2020). In spite of the material mediation involved in technologyenhanced learning, many investigators of the field foreground either conceptual (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006) or intersubjective (Andriessen, Baker, & Suthers, 2003) aspects of CSCL; the materiality of collaborative learning appears at least partially to be "missing in action" (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008).…”

“…Collaborative making is a sociomaterial process that entangles social-interactive processes with materially mediated processes (Mehto, Riikonen, Hakkarainen, Kangas and Seitamaa-Hakkarainen 2020;Orlikowski and Scott 2008). Sketches and prototypes provide material anchors for directing ongoing co-invention efforts.…”

Students’ multimodal knowledge practices in a makerspace learning environment

“…By social practices we refer to the recurring patterns of activities, which are embodied and mediated by language and tools, artifacts that are grounded in epistemic objects and artifacts, and shared by the participants of a certain community (Schatzki 1996;Schatzki 2001;Schmidt and Volbers 2011;Miettinen 2006). Moreover, we view the processes of collective knowledge creation taking place through interactive practices that contribute to ideas and learning being materialized into shared epistemic (i.e., knowledge) objects and artifacts (Riikonen et al 2020;Mehto et al 2020;Paavola et al 2011).…”