Learning to innovate: Students and teachers constructing collective innovation practices in a primary school’s makerspace

Abstract

The need to foster citizens’ innovation skills is widely recognized. Although current research acknowledges the potential of makerspaces to promote innovation activities, research still lacks an understanding of underlying mechanisms that can lead the creation of innovations in makerspaces by students. Moreover, research to date has overlooked how innovation practices are formed in K–12 makerspaces. In this sociocultural study, we used ethnographic video data from a Finnish primary school’s makerspace and applied methods of abductive Video Data Analysis to investigate how innovation practices are constructed in first to sixth grade students’ and teachers’ interactions. The results of this study show that the innovations created by the students in the makerspace were an outcome of students’ and teachers’ collective innovation practices. The study provides a typology of these collective innovation practices, namely: taking joint action to innovate, navigating a network of resources, and sustaining innovation activities. Further, our results reveal that the collective actions encouraged students to use skills deemed to be important for innovation creation. Also, adding to existing research knowledge, our results reveal two mechanisms that potentially promote students’ learning to innovate. These mechanisms include the teachers’ orientation to facilitating open-ended STEAM projects and practices that emphasize students’ ownership over their personal projects.

Designing and implementing maker curriculum for promoting 7th graders’ maker competence

“…As mentioned above, the targeted junior high school teachers disenthralled themselves from the standardized curriculum and traditional teaching methods with the support of the teacher professional development community and then worked collaboratively to provide their students with an innovative learning style in which they were able to think critically and logically, solve real-life problems interactively and collaboratively, and create freely and reflectively. In addition, this kind of learner-centered and inquirybased movement was authentically valuable in furnishing these adolescents with both scientific inquiry competence and maker competence (i.e., knowledge, attitude, and skills) relevant to technology, aesthetics, and curation with an interdisciplinary STEAM approach, which corresponded with previous perspectives and empirical evidence from different scholars (Halverson and Sheridan, 2014;Chang and Wu, 2018;Oswald and Zhao, 2021;Leskinen et al, 2023;Sun et al, 2023). However, the average mean rating of the maker competence of those 7th-gaders in the control group was only 2.99 (on a 5-point Likert scale), which was not a favorable result.…”

“…Indeed, the maker movement provides students with new paths for thinking and diverse ways to act, which is beneficial for cultivating their computational thinking (Resnick and Silverman, 2003;Blikstein, 2008). Recent studies indicated that creating a makerspace in which students learn in an enriched environment that emphasizes engagement, communication, practice, and innovation is beneficial for promoting students' maker spirit and competence Oswald and Zhao, 2021;Avendano-Uribe et al, 2022;Hughes et al, 2023;Leskinen et al, 2023). In addition, it is valuable to support and motivate students' learning autonomy (Ryan and Deci, 2000;Barron, 2006;Azevedo, 2011); that is, anyone can learn the skills they require to accomplish what they imagine (Dweck, 2000).…”

“…In addition to STEAM education, the maker movement is known for designing a makerspace where a student-centered and inquirybased learning environment is established to encourage students to actively engage in the designated maker curriculum to develop their maker competence Leskinen et al, 2023). This kind of makerspace or maker learning environment emphasizes providing similar multi-faceted learning tasks and employing an inquiry-based teaching model enabling students to energetically practice their scientific capabilities with the learned interdisciplinary content knowledge to develop designated innovative skills and products (Oswald and Zhao, 2021).…”

“…Previous research findings also indicated that STEAM education is valuable for promoting students' reflection on their own scientific reasoning (Bassachs et al, 2020), advancing their capabilities of oral communication (Botuzova, 2020), engaging them to actively work on targeted learning tasks effectively and innovatively (Lavrenova et al, 2020;Makonye, 2020), and providing all students with equal access to all fields of science, which can reduce the gender gap in science and technology (Guenaga Gómez and Fernández Álvarez, 2020;Kijima and Sun, 2020). Similarly, the maker movement, focusing on "hands-on, creation, design and innovation" (Peppler and Bender, 2013), shares this interdisciplinary nature and provides a creative learning environment for all students to think and act anew that is beneficial for nurturing their competencies (e.g., maker competence) Oswald and Zhao, 2021;Avendano-Uribe et al, 2022;Hughes et al, 2023;Leskinen et al, 2023). Hughes et al (2023) claimed that design thinking and collaboration are fundamental to developing the learning tasks of the maker curriculum.…”

“…Once students engage in the process of physical or digital creation, their conceptual understanding, as well as their critical thinking, perseverance, and scientific knowledge and skills are authentically developed, reinforced, and intentionally scaffolded. In this way, more student-centered "learning by doing process" opportunities are provided in the classroom where students can transform the fragmentary knowledge learned into exploring the interrelationships of various issues through the hands-on learning process, which is favorable for them to advance their maker competence Oswald and Zhao, 2021;Hughes et al, 2023;Leskinen et al, 2023) and apply what is learned in their future (Pellegrino and Hilton, 2012).…”