Understanding the educators’ practices in makerspaces for the design of education tools

Abstract

Makerspaces persist as formal and informal spaces of learning for youth, promoting continued interest in studying how design can support the variety of learning opportunities within these spaces. However, much of the current research examining learning in makerspaces neglects the perspectives of educators. This not only hinders our understanding of educators’ goals and how educators navigate makerspaces but also constrains how we frame the design space of the learning experiences and environments. To address this, we engaged in a set of semi-structured interviews to examine the contexts, goals, values, and practices of seven educators across five makerspaces. A thematic analysis of the data identified six key categories of competencies that these educators prioritize including a range of skills, practices, and knowledge, such as technical proficiency, communication, and contextual reflection. The analysis also identified five categories of strategies to accomplish certain goals, such as scaffolding, collaboration, and relationship building. Last, it also shed light on three categories of challenges faced at the student-level, teacher-level, and institutional level. We conclude with a discussion on our insights into how we can broaden the problem space in the design of educational technologies to support learning in makerspaces.

Trends, tensions, and futures of maker education research: a 2025 vision for STEM+ disciplinary and transdisciplinary spaces for learning through making

“…Last in this cluster comes the work by Dishita Turakhia, David Ludgin, Stefanie Mueller, Kayla DesPortes (Turakhia et al, 2023), which synthesizes the perspectives of experienced maker educators from makerspaces with varied organizational formats, indirectly contributing to the discussion of assessment practice and frameworks. The work presents findings on competencies that maker educators prioritize, challenges they face at the student-level, teacher-level, and institutional level, and teaching strategies they use to accomplish learning goal, such as scaffolding, collaboration, and relationship building.…”

“…Furthermore on the idea of an ecological view of maker education, teachers should not be expected to design maker-oriented learning experiences without support. Ample time working with maker-oriented technologies (digital or analog) and some technical proficiencies are necessary before teachers can incorporate them in their lessons or even consider them in their learning designs (e.g., in this issue, see Turakhia et al, 2023). Certainly, educators can benefit from maker-centered professional development and direct teaching of skills (e.g., programming) needed in a maker-centered curriculum (e.g., in this issue, see Fegely et al, 2023).…”

“…Notably, despite the heterogeneity, in almost every paper in this special issue, we found evidence of learning from failure and the value of fostering resilience towards failure through making (while we use failure for brevity here, note Vossoughi et al (2016) discussing the powered nature of how notions of failure operate in specific communities). Whether this was discussed directly by the authors (e.g., in this issue, see Ge et al, 2023;Turakhia et al, 2023) or remained silent behind other relevant findings and discussions, as editors of this special issue, we would like to draw attention to the importance of this competency that can be developed in maker contexts. In the ever-changing world we live in, embracing iteration and reflection, and creating spaces for the learners to tinker, experiment, and take risks are of paramount importance.…”