Exploring the 3D printing process for young children in curriculum-aligned making in the classroom

Interaction Order and Historical Body Shaping Children’s Making Projects—A Literature Review

“…Our findings related to this theme is limited only to two studies. Berman et al argue that in their study (about 3D printing), children were not able to explore new perceptions and got stuck in the repetition and recreation of the same product through the same process ("Keychain Syndrome") [43]. And in [8], children had difficulties in coming up with ideas due to not having exposure to outside learning resources.…”

“…Beneficial engagement is mentioned, when the projects were set in a way that researchers played the role of the: facilitators of the activities [8,42,70,77], assistants to the children by providing answers to children's questions as well as to the teachers' questions [9], lecturers, who provided presentation on the topic and introduced the activities to the children [22], 3D printing operators, triggering the "situational awareness" of 3D printing and reducing children's disappointments regarding 3D printing challenges [43], teachers of the Making lessons and leaders of the classroom [42], sources of learning for children [8], and mediators of digital fabrication machines such as 3D printers, laser cutters and vinyl cutters [77].…”

“…Verbal instruction and technical assistance. (1) facilitators described the tasks to the children and ensured that they understood the tasks [24], provided children with technical assistance [24], (2) tutors assisted children with technical issues [15], (3) mediators contributed in providing technical supports by recording some certain moments and ideas on the whiteboard for children [71], (4) helpers provided some technical assistance by performing the task for children [23], and (5) offering assistance if requested by children was pointed out in some studies [10,12,21,43,49].…”

“…Problematic engagement. As a problematic engagement, dependency on the helper was reported, in a way that if the immediate intervention of the helper was not met, children easily gave up on the task in hand [43].…”

“…The importance of teachers [3,7,9,14,16,17,20,24,36,37], facilitators [7,24,26,27,[38][39][40], mentors [5,9,10,26,41], and peers as influencing (helping or hindering) children's Making activities has already been pointed out in the literature. Likewise, studies have already indicated that children's skills, knowledge, and experiences may be highly significant in shaping how children engage in or are discouraged from Making activities [2,3,5,7,8,10,[13][14][15]17,20,21,24,26,27,30,35,36,40,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Previous literatu...…”