1 Learning from the Maker Movement
The rise of the Maker Movement – a community of hobbyists, tinkerers, engineers, hackers, and artists who creatively design and build projects for both playful and useful ends (Martin, 2015, p. 30) provides new opportunities and inspiration for Technology Education as well as a number of challenges. Currently no books have been published on this theme while the Maker Movement has been maturing, improving practices, opening up new makerspaces and the maker space pedagogies and strategies have entered formal schooling. In addition, academic publications on Maker Education and empirical investigations
Although there have been interactions between researchers, innovators and teachers operating in the field of Technology Education and those in the Maker Movement, these fields have been developed along separate, social and academic lines. Technology education, as part of foundational education, vocational education or higher education, has a long history, whereas the Maker Movement started at the beginning of the 21st century and is a new shoot in the educational field.
In this book the two fields will meet. They have many elements in common, they are both focused on the material world and the agency of learners is an important element in both traditions. The purpose of this book is to understand and analyze the kind of informal and formal educational activities that take place under the umbrella of the Maker Movement and then relate this to the field of Technology education in a way that helps to uncover what researchers, innovators and teachers in this field can learn from the principles, ideas and practices that are central to the Maker Movement and vice versa.
In this Introduction, Section 2 describes the rise of Maker Education and in Section 3 we analyze the social trends and reasons that made it come to life and spread across countries and continents. Signature pedagogical ideas of the maker movement including learning through experience and tinkering, constructivism and social learning are described in Section 4. This section also focuses on the educational value: what do you learn through making? Section 5 relates the rise of Maker Education to the already present Technology Education and aspects of sustainability are discussed in Section 6. The set-up of the book with its case studies and thematic chapters is explained in the last section.
2 The Rise of Maker Education
Making things is at the core of humanity. Young children will make things during play; for example, they may build a shelter using bed sheets and a standing lamp. Working with materials is present in all societies, whether we prepare meals, make clothing, renovate spaces or repair bikes. However, due to changes in modern technology, making has been removed from house-holds and everyday life, to industries. It is no longer possible or necessary to repair products, and quite often households prefer to buy ready-made products instead of making these themselves. Making as such is not on the rise.
However, the idea that learning by making is important has gained momentum through the Maker Movement that started in the United States of America.
Computer scientists Papert and Solomon who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did not share this public opinion and developed a vision in which children would actively make things with computers via programming. In 1968, Papert (2005, reprinted from 1980) writes in Teaching Children Thinking about his concerns that computers will be used in schools for the dumbest part of learning, namely rote learning. Therefore, Papert and Solomon, the latter also working as a computer teacher in elementary and secondary schools, start advocating an active, creative role for children and list lots of possible educative projects that can be done with a computer such as controlling puppets, making movies, programming and composing music. With this vision in mind, Papert, Solomon and partners developed the first programming language for children, called Logo, that features a Turtle. To this very day, later versions of Logo, including Scratch are among the most popular programming environments for children.
They were true visionaries at that time describing a school computation laboratory in which children could invent, build and experiment with computers (Martinez & Stager, 2013; Papert & Solomon, 1971). Papert and Solomon envision computers children could experiment with:
In our image of a school computation laboratory, an important role is played by numerous ‘control ports’ which allow any student to plug any device into the computer…. The laboratory will have a supply of motors, solenoids, relays, sense devices of various kinds etc. Using them, the students will be able to invent and build an endless variety of cybernetic systems.
(1971, p. 39)
An interesting element in their approach is the combination of digital and physical making, an element which is also present in the current maker movement.
Another important moment that can be considered as initiating the maker movement is a course called “How to make almost anything” at the MIT Media lab in the early 2000s given by professor Neil Gershenfeld. Students with different backgrounds and disciplines joined the course and learned to use digital tools to make and express themselves. Gershenfield was surprised that these inventions were not only highly personal, but were executed by students working alone, when in a corporate context such products would be the work of teams (Martinez & Stager, 2013, p. 24). He noticed the emergence of a collaborative culture that emerged during classes in his own fab lab. Until today, the course has been running and resulting products are documented and shared through website presentations.
A few years later, Gershenfeld reached out to new target groups including underserved youth in inner-city communities by providing a portable lab with making equipment that could be transported to various locations (Blikstein, 2018; Gershenfeld, 2005). Through the lab ordinary people could make things using digital tools such as a 3D-printer or a laser cutter.
This portable lab is the predecessor of the thousands of fab labs and other Makerspaces around the world today. At first the fab labs grew slowly and were mainly concentrated in the United States and Europe. This changed when Dough Dougherty launched Make Magazine in 2005 and organized a Maker Fair in 2006 in the San Francisco area that attracted tens of thousands of people, as the fairs of the computer builders had done in the past. It turned out that many hobbyists, tinkerers, engineers, hackers, and artists where creatively designing and building projects – using digital and non-digital technologies – and
The maker movement was at this point mainly thriving outside educational institutes, at home and in informal contexts. It was not until 2008, that digital fabrication places and the accompanying pedagogical ideas reached K-12 schools. Paulo Blikstein of Stanford University started working with K-12 schools in Brazil and in the United States to create pedagogies and fab labs that could be used in schools (Blikstein, 2008). Digital fabrication is in his eyes a way to create artefacts that have an attractive appearance and would inspire children to make things that they were personally interested in. He also wanted to bring more agency to students and sees the FabLab as a disruptive place in schools, where students could safely make, build and share their inventions. Blikstein also established a world-wide network of educators. The first FabLab@School conference in 2011 was visited by many K-12 educators from around the world and many became involved in developing and implementing the FabLabs and Makerspaces in their own schools, see for example Chapter 2 on the rise of maker education in China and Chapter 3 about Denmark. Around 2013, commercial organizations jumped on and started programs that further increased the momentum of making and coding in K-12 education (Blikstein, 2018).
In ten years’ time, a network of educators was established. In accordance with the open and sharing culture of the maker spaces, educators and researchers in many countries, share their educational ideas. In the FabLearn Fellow program, experienced educators in formal and informal learning spaces are brought together to contribute to research on making and makerspaces. In the 2020–2022 cohort, educators from Brazil, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Peru, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Thailand, Togo, the United Kingdom, and the United States were involved (Fablearn website,3). A meta-review from 2021 included empirical studies from over 26 countries with all continents represented (Mersand, 2021). The ideals and ideas of the maker movement have spread quickly. A visitor of the first Dutch Fablearn conference noticed an enthusiastic vibe and a willingness and openness to listen to each other’s “educational experiments”. The culture of tinkering in the FabLabs has influenced the educators and researchers and created a willingness to let “1000 flowers grow”. Many researchers report that there is a huge
This short history of the maker movement shows that maker education – unlike technology education – started outside the educational institutes. All initiatives emphasize the active use of digital and other technologies to make, build and create. Making is considered as fun, and tinkering as something that supports people to learn and to express themselves. Interaction with other makers is essential for novices as well as experienced makers and the “public” act of sharing work in progress leads to learning. Free choice and activities that are personal important for the maker are especially advocated. An important credo is that everybody is a maker, can join the worldwide community of makers which values an open culture. In the Netherlands, the maker movement uses a broad definition of making and includes lots of activities that are traditionally seen as female, such as knitting and making jam. Although the movement officially wants to include everybody, this is a complicated issue. Researchers such as (Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, 2016) have shown that the maker movement in the USA is heavenly influenced by white, middle-class ideas of making and is led by people with leisure time, technical knowledge and resources to make (Barton, Tan, & Greenberg, 2017, p. 5). While these researchers (Rose, 2005; Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, 2016) appreciate the attention of the Maker Movement for making, they argue that making is not just fun but a necessity for working class and immigrant families:
Working-class folks have not had the luxury of discovering making and tinkering: they’ve been doing it all their lives to survive – and creating exchange networks to facilitate it. Somebody across the street or down the road is a mechanic, or is wise about home remedies, or does tile work, and you can swap your own skills and services for that expertise.
(Rose, 2014, p. XXV)
The same necessity to make is present among immigrant families leading to forms of creativity and reinvention that are embodied in the everyday life of immigrant families. For example, Vossoughi et al. (2016) point to the Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat (Danticat, 2013, August 27) who describes the story of her mother that highlights the historical conditions that necessitated creativity: “If you can’t afford clothes, but you can make them – make them. You have to work with what you have, especially if you don’t have a lot of money. You use creativity, and you use imagination” (Danticat, 2013, para. 8). Quite often, ingenuity
Blikstein aims at empowerment and increased self-esteem by augmenting the familiar practices of building and making with computational tools and scientific reasoning. Blikstein (2013, p. 7) states:
Especially in low-income schools, students would often tell me that they used to ‘make’ and build things with their parents and friends, and often had jobs in garages, construction companies, or carpentry shops. However that experience was disconnected from their school life, since they did not see a link between the intellectual work in the classroom and the manual labor in the wood shop. Because of bias inherit within the educational system their own forms of engineering and tinkering, stripped down of any form of mathematical of scientific content, were looked down upon by society and by themselves.
3 Reasons behind the Rise of Maker Education
Although specific people have considerably influenced the rise of the maker movement and maker education, a number of cultural and historic reasons may explain why the making movement has spread the last fifteen years across the world.
The first reason may seem a bit contradictory at first sight. Due to industrialization as well as emancipation, making things yourself has become less prevalent in many societies. Many products are nowadays made in a manner that they are not repairable anymore.4 Especially in households in western societies, less and less people are engaged in making, e.g. clothes are bought and many households no longer use sewing machines. As a result, a great many children lack the opportunity to learn to make things at home. In other words, the value of making has been rediscovered. Vossoughi et al. (2016) however
The idea that everybody is a maker and that making is part of our identity as humans is a reaction to this as it revalues making. Many of those who are in power and make decisions on education, whether for their own children or for their school or nation, see the value of making in learning and want to recreate and revive making as this will lead to engagement, fun and educative opportunities for the next generation. This kind of reasoning is for example present in talks and books by Astrid Poot, one of the key figures in the Dutch maker Movement.
The second reason for the rise of maker education has to do with the social acceptance of the ideas of progressive, experience-based constructivist education (Blikstein, 2018). In many of the talks and popular books by advocates of the making movement, maker education is compared with traditional learning through books and instruction. In the field of educational research and practice, one can see two different streams, on the one hand the instructionalists and on the other hand the constructivists. This division goes back till the end of the 18th century when in Switzerland, Johann Pestalozzi started to experiment with what we would call nowadays learning through experience and construction of knowledge. Maker education is placed in this tradition and seen as constructivist containing the promise of learning through experience and self-regulated learners that acquirer higher order skills through personal relevant projects in disruptive yet safe places. This is in line with what many policymakers, companies, parents as well as scholars want for children, they want more emphasis on learning by doing as well as nurturing skills such as creative thinking and problem solving as they are essential in our current, ever changing society and workplaces. Innovation and solving social problems are considered important, and young people should get the opportunity to embark on this early on. This is reflected in curriculum goals present in for example the US Next Generation Science Standards or in the Dutch Curriculum. Many curricula place a stronger emphasis on problem solving, creative thinking, scientific practices, and give design, engineering and making a more central place in the K-12 curriculum.
Another, third reason is related to the attractiveness and status of digital, innovative technologies for children, parents and teachers. In combination with highlighting the value of the more traditional tools of hammers and sewing machines, and the idea that everybody is a maker, it is possible for a lot of people to identify with the maker movement. As shown in the case study on the Amsterdam Maker Spaces of the Libraries, parents as well as children are attracted. In addition, the dramatic reduction of cost in Digital Fabrication
Finally, the fact that the maker movement started mainly outside the educational systems may have supported its development. Educational systems are hard to change, as policy makers may want changes, early adopters inside the system may want changes, but in practice there is a lot of resistance and educational systems tend to change slowly. However, in the case of the maker movement, the makers were already there, but became visible through the fairs and magazines and gained momentum, visibility and more status. As the movement growth was first mainly in the non-formal context of households, followed by more informal settings such as in the public maker spaces and supported by universities, it was possible to experiment with and create spaces that fostered new teaching and learning approaches and to put new ideals about learning into practice. In these small, informal spaces, it was shown that a different kind of approach to education was possible and success stories that were happening in many places were being shared. Quite often, as innovation theory has shown, innovations are developed by small companies and not within the big, existing companies. So, the fact that the early innovators could work and innovate outside the formal educational contexts through working with partners such as local municipalities, companies, libraries and museums who provided money as well as time helped to shape new pedagogies around formal and informal maker education. This in turn inspired K-12 schools as we can derive from the meta-review by Rouse and Gillespie Rouse (2022).
4 Educational Value: What Do You Learn through Making?
In this section, key pedagogic ideas/concepts of the maker movement are described as well as the kind of social and cognitive learning outcomes it wants to achieve. We will also give insights into educational reformers who emphasized the value of making.
4.1 Educational Reformers Valuing Materiality
For a long time, making and materiality was absent in formal education. Schools would focus on literacy and learning math. This changed when the Swiss Johann Pestalozzi (1746–1827) who – inspired by the French Philosopher Rousseau – entered the scene. He focused on educating the poor and discovered that the use of objects from the child’s environment eased the learning of math and language: “Long before the spelling-book comes on, children might be made acquainted with those objects, of which they are to learn the names,
Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852) was a student from Pestalozzi and a reformers who followed Pestalozzi in his attention for child-centered pedagogies and emphasis on personal experiences and materiality. Fröbel created the concept of kindergarten and manufactured playing materials for preschool children as he recognized the importance of the activity of the child in learning. He also introduced the concept of “free work” (Freiarbeit) into pedagogy and established the “game” as the typical form that life took in childhood and stressed the educational value of games and play. Activities in the first kindergarten included singing, dancing, gardening, and self-directed play with the Fröbel materials. Both Fröbel and Pestalozzi combine materiality with a child-centered pedagogy in which children learned through playful, self-driven activities.
In the same century in Finland, Uno Cygnaeus initated handicraft-based education in 1865 called Sloyd. In Sloyd, there is an emphasis on working with a variety of materials including woodwork, metalwork and textiles and creating personally designed products. Sloyd spread around many countries and is compulsory in Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian schools. Nowadays, these countries are still among the frontrunners in design and technology education and have added digital technologies to the range of materials used in primary and secondary education.
A little later, in Italy Maria Montessori (1870–1952) promoted learning through every day activities, such as caring for the school environment and setting a table to have lunch together. She also developed specific, tangible materials that could be used to learn math and other subjects. “The hand is the chief teacher of the child” was an important credo. Usually, children work independently or in small groups; however, by observing others they also learn and become engaged in new activities. The materials provide concrete experience but move the child towards the abstract.
Constructionism – the N word as opposed to the V word – share constructivism’s connotation of learning as “building knowledge structures” irrespective of the circumstances of learning. It then adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where a learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity.
(Papert, 1991, p. 1)
Martinez and Stager see an analogy between John Dewey’s ideas about the spiral process of knowledge creation and iterative design processes applied in maker education (Dewey 2013, p. 14). According to Dewey, educators need to recognize what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth, this includes utilizing both physical and social surroundings so they contribute to valuable experiences (Dewey, 1938, p. 40).
4.2 Key Principles in Maker-Centered Education
Making is not new in education, it is present in art, engineering, design and technology education, home economics, maker education, disciplines that are all maker-centered.
What exactly is making? There are several conceptions present in the context of the maker movement (Martin, 2015, p. 30). Martin uses these definitions to develop the following encompassing working definition of
making as a class of activities focused on designing, building, modifying, and/or repurposing material objects, for playful or useful ends, oriented toward making a “product” of some sort that can be used, interacted with, or demonstrated. Making often involves traditional craft and hobby techniques (e.g., sewing, woodworking, etc.), and it often involves the use of digital technologies, either for manufacture (e.g., laser cutters, CNC machines, 3D printers) or within the design (e.g., microcontrollers, LED s). (p. 31)
Researchers and educators in the field of design and technology education and those involve in maker movement initiatives, stress the importance of agency of the learner. Allowing learners to make something related to their personal interest will usually lead to strong, intrinsic motivation (Martin, 2015). Authentic projects and design challenges related to the learners interest and surroundings are thought to have a similar effect. Although evidence exists, not all learners become necessarily motivated through authentic design and make projects, e.g. in a case study on informal learning Martin tells the story about Victor who finds it difficult to start a personal project. Even when Victor is encouraged to follow personal interests, he does not become engaged in making. At some point, his makerspace coaches discover that Victor really likes to help other learners with their projects. Victors gets engaged, not through personal interests in a specific topic or through tinkering on his own with the materials, but through social relations and his motivation to help others (Martin & Betser, 2020).
An important question is on how to introduce the art of making and its related processes such as tinkering and designing to novices. A strong point of informal communities is the mix of learners present. Coaches and participants that have gained expertise in certain making techniques, materials as well as ways of working, are important in “initiating” novices. By observing, watching, joining and following discussions and tinkering of the more experienced participants, novices will learn about sound making practices, become engaged and develop their maker capability. Martin and Betser (2020) describe how a novice participant in a maker place observes a mentor taking apart a sensor,
Learners may also bring personal experience to making, e.g. during a summer camp a girl named Kristen started spontaneously sketching during a design project, while another participant who had prior experience in engineering and making through his family, applied a strategy of comparing his teams non-working wind turbine with a working wind turbine from another team. By comparing the spatial configurations, the team was able to get the wind turbine running (Ramey & Uttal, 2017). Making, designing, tinkering and related processes are learned through noticing the strategies and artefacts of other participants.
Besides open approaches were novices start making through engagement with other learners, there are various other ways to engage learners in designing, tinkering and making to novices. In design and technology education, teams are often given a design challenge or problem. Educators may start with a very broad topic, like Blikstein (2008) who did a project on electricity safety during a two-week project with students in Brazil or with a very specific challenge, e.g. develop a floating device that can carry as much marbles as possible (Looijenga, Klapwijk, & de Vries, 2015). The design challenge can be defined by the coaches and educators or by the participants. In the context of the maker movement, the design or problem solving task can be just for fun, while in design and technology educations the idea is to develop relevant and potential useful designs.
A third approach to start making is by “playing” and tinkering with a specific material or technology. This approach is often present in art education and aims at understanding the possibilities of the materials, e.g. what will happen when I heat this material. This playful approach, starting from the materials and curiosity, helps to discover and extend possibilities as a stepping stone towards innovative functional products or art. The approach is also found in digital fabrication and ICT; as these technologies change quickly, there is no common knowledge how to use them best and these are discovered by novices through creative tinkering.
Learning how to use certain technologies or materials can also entail that experts give instructions, demonstrations, step-by-step tasks or construction kits. This approach is often present in vocational education and in Sloyd but also in informal contexts such as maker spaces. For example, children may make a puzzle or tissue box to learn to work with the laser printer and then
All these approaches are used in maker education, art, engineering or design and technology education. Nevertheless, the maker movement approach has unique features. Learning is especially done through self-directed tinkering and experimenting, learners will discover what works and what does not work. In this process, learners need support from knowledgeable others but also act as knowledgeable others. Learning is thus a material and social process. Especially in informal makerspaces participants may meet participants from different age-groups and with different expertise’s. The social aspect of learning is thought to be strong in maker contexts because – due to materiality – artefacts can be shared. The visibility and tangibility of the artefacts make it easier to learn together, both during the design and make process as well as afterwards.
The maker movement’s focus on tinkering in a safe environment with social interaction with no strict hierarchies – a mentor may learn from the tinkering and thinking of novices – and just-in-time explanations are signature pedagogies. In addition, giving (exciting) materials and technologies without a lot of instruction or specific curriculum goals is advised, learners should be allowed to use their intellect to make something but also extend their own intelligence (Stager & Martinez, 2013).
Martin (2015) summarizes this maker mindset or signature pedagogic approach as follows:
Playful. Play, fun and interest are at the heart of making.
Asset- and growth-oriented. Makers are free to focus their activities where they want to and a “growth-mindset” is stimulated. The emphasis is on what they can do and what they can learn.
Failure-positive. Failure is perceived as something should not be avoided, but even celebrated. The process of becoming stuck and then “unstuck” is at the heart of tinkering (Pretich et al., 2013).
Collaborative. Sharing, collaboration and helping others who do other projects is embraced.
Some authors have critiqued the focus on playfulness and fun, they argue that this is very much an elite point of view, as making is an economic necessity for many makers, e.g. the working class and immigrants. In design and technology education, there is also more focus on the fact that material artefacts have a social function and are needed for food, for shelter, for environmental protections, etc.
4.3
An important goal of maker-centered education is to get learners acquainted with the practices prevalent in engineering and designing. Through embodied learning, learners will engage in problem solving and conjecturing about possible solutions (Blikstein, 2013, 2018). By making prototypes, tinkering or more formal testing the learners will get feedback on their imagined solutions from the materials. These materials can be seen as “educators” and will become part of the social discourse. It is just not possible to practice many of the key ways of working in design and engineering without embodied learning.
Making, especially when combined with designing and experimenting, can contribute to the learning of scientific and technological concepts and rules. Although these concepts never dictate a solution, they often guide the search for a solution and may point in a specific, promising direction (Kroes, 1995) or help to reflect on the tinkering, models and prototypes made and explain how they work or why do not work. For example, learners may develop understanding of some of the key concepts in design and engineering, e.g. form-function thinking, system thinking or experience firsthand how triangular connections add strength to constructions.
Applying scientific concepts and reasoning is also part of maker projects, through tinkering and designing learners may understand these in a deeper way than just from textbooks. Stammes (2021), in a study on making and designing toothpaste and thermos challenges in the context of chemistry education showed that pupils and teachers talked about concepts such as structure-property relationships, chemical mechanisms, differences between conducting and isolating materials applying them in their sketches, prototypes and experiments. However, as tinkering and designing can be done in a trial-and-error way, learners may develop working solutions without a real understanding of the scientific concepts behind them, especially when concepts are “hidden”, because many scientific phenomena are invisible, such as the bonding of molecules.
Meta-reviews on maker-centered education also indicate that concept learning does take place through making (Shad & Jones, 2019; Shersand, 2021; Rouse & Rouse Gillespie, 2022). Especially e-textile projects have been extensively studied (Buechley, 2006; Buechley & Hill, 2010; Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2014; Litts, Kafai, Lui, Walker, & Widman, 2017; Tofel-Grehl et al., 2017). E-textiles, perhaps emerged as the first-ever female dominated computing field; more than 60% of e-textile designers in the world are women (Buechley, Peppler, Eisenberg, & Yasmin, 2013). Using tools such as LilyPad Arduino it becomes possible to easily sewn circuits into clothing or other textile products leading to electronically-enhanced high-end fashion and personalized products.
Making and its related practices such as designing, engineering, coding are potentially suitable vehicles for technological and scientific concept learning. However, many researchers have argued that a discourse on these concepts should be present in order to learn. Van Breukelen, Van Meel, & De Vries (2017) noticed that only a small amount of the teacher-student interaction in design activities centered around explicating concepts in a project focusing on designing a solar power system for a model house. Only 13% of all interventions concerned, to a greater or lesser extent, direct explication of underlying science. Furthermore, the design challenge lacked sufficient de- and recontextualization of addressed concepts according to the involved students who were studying to become a science teacher (16–18 year-olds). Making is also used to improve understanding in the social and economic disciplines, e.g. history and social sciences.
Besides testing and tinkering, building a community that engages in sharing and reflecting on experience is needed. Roël-Looijenga (2021) introduced the idea of joint reflection with eight year olds in a Montessori class and noticed
Similar Koski, Klapwijk and De Vries (2011) argue that the learning process should ideally move between three knowledge domains, the social context, the concrete object and abstract knowledge including concepts from both the engineering and natural sciences. The central position of the concrete, materialized product in this three-domain model is not arbitrary. The product may invite the learner to explore the social context in which the product is used as well as the concepts that are helpful in the exploration, design and making of the object. However, one could also start in the social domain (with the need and desires to make something) or in the domain of the concepts. Ideally, each domain enriches and inspires the learning in other domains and learners move iteratively between the domains.
Making is also a good vehicle to develop many of the so-called 21st century skills as well as agency. Klapwijk and Stables (2023) and Klapwijk et al. (2019) have summarized key skills in the context of formative assessment of design learning to make learners and their coaches more aware of what they are learning during the design and make processes. Seven skills are defined including divergent thinking, productive mistakes and bringing ideas to life (through different media), empathy, communication (and cooperation), deciding on directions and understanding the design process. These skills related to the 21st century are not developed in a void, but need a context and making is one of the vehicles for their development.
Through making, empathy is developed. Learners may either start with a social need they relate to. Making also prompts makers to think about how their families and other stakeholders may make use of certain technologies. The actual making stimulates agency, through making learners discover that they can be relevant to others and make positive changes possible, e.g. pupils developed a game to learn math in a new and fun way (Klapwijk, 2017) or contribute to re-using waste by making products from waste for a loved-one. It is important to note that most of the projects will not solve the world’s problems, however, through these projects learners will discover the relevance of technology and science for society and develop positive attitudes towards making in general and careers in STEAM.
Last but not least technological literacy is developed through making in a broad sense, but also in the sense of craftmanship. Especially, makers spaces offer a variety of tools and materials in which expertise is developed. Through
Another claim or hope is that through making, children will learn to learn. Papert, Blikstein and others expect that self-directed learning and agency developed during making will be transferred to other contexts (Blikstein, 2013). Making helps them to become self-directed learners who pursue their own process. As this is not always easy, they learn to endure and to make productive mistakes. Although there is in the form of case studies, ample evidence that this happens in maker spaces (Martin & Betser, 2020) and in schools (Riikonen, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, & Hakkarainen, 2020), this is not always the case. The same two studies also show that not all students are in all circumstances able to manage and pursue their own projects successfully. Smith, Iversen, and Hjorth (2015) found that loosely framed projects with no criteria or guidance led to student frustration, while Schut (2023) discovered that feedback from real clients and peers may often lead to resistance and fixation.
Finally, it is hoped that making will help students to enter in deep-learning processes in which they feel the need for more knowledge, skills or expertise to pursue a certain make or design goal. Just-in-time educational models are advocated, learning should be driven by demand and instruction limited (Dijk, Meij, & Savelsbergh, 2020; Stager & Martinez, 2013). It is thus hoped, that through increased motivation, children and other maker space participants become self-directed learners and that the agency developed through (digital) making will be transferred to other contexts.
5 Maker Education and School Subjects
Although the roots of the Maker Education movement go back at least a hundred years ago, the popularity it has now emerged around the beginning of the 21st century. At that time, in most countries a lot of making took place in school, in a subject with varying names (Technology Education, Design & Technology Education, Industrial Technology Education, and many equivalent names in other languages). Technology Education also has roots that go back at least a century in craft education. But the school subject as we know it now in most countries emerged around the 1970s (some countries being earlier than others and still there are countries that only now give it a solid place in the school curriculum). That means that Technology Education was already in place for about three decades before Maker Education started gaining popularity. This quick
6 Maker Education and Environmental Sustainability
A serious concern related to the strongly increased popularity of making through the Maker Movement is the increased use of materials and the effect this has on the natural environment. According to Klemichen, Peters, and Stark (2022), considerations of environmental sustainability are not a primary concern for many maker enthusiasts. The easy access to making equipment and the easiness with which products can be made in Makerspaces have given rise to serious doubts about the effects of making activities on the natural environment. Maker enthusiasts often lack knowledge about the environmental effects of their making activities and do not see that as a real concern (Kohtala & Hyysalo, 2015). They find pleasure in making objects that are not to be used for any practical purpose but thrown away after the making activity as the fun was more in the making itself than in the resulting object. Although the possibilities of re-using materials constantly increases thanks to new research studies in (sustainable) engineering, the amount of materials use can increase so rapidly due to the increase in popularity of making activities that not only precious resources are lost but also waste is created that needs to be processed. Even when there is an awareness of the need to think about sustainability in doing the maker activities, that does not always lead to changes in behaviour (Klemichen, Peters, & Stark, 2022).
Fortunately environmental sustainability has become the focus of some dedicated projects, such as the ecoMaker project in Germany (Klemichen, Peters, & Stark, 2022). Maker Education certainly has the potential of raising an awareness of the need for sustainable living among citizens. Although materials use is only one of the many aspects of sustainable living, it is certainly not the least important one. When considerations related to environmental sustainability become a constant element in maker activities, this can be a powerful instrument for stimulating responsible use of material. Here, too, Maker Education and Technology Education (as part of formal education) can stimulate each other. In Technology Education, too, there is still a similar gap between awareness and practice. A continuous cooperation between
7 Set-up and Structure of This Book
The set-up and structure of this book are similar to a previous volume in the International Technology Education Studies book series, namely the volume “Analyzing best practices in technology education”, edited by De Vries, Custer, Dakers, and Martin (2007). Both in that volume and in this one we have commissioned two types of chapters. The first type is case study chapters. These chapters are descriptions of a certain practice with a focus on the particular features of that practice and not so much a thematic comparison with other practices or with theory. That happens in the second type of chapters. In those chapters the authors have used the case studies to reflect on different themes associated with Maker Education in relation with Technology Education. Not all case studies have been used in all chapters, but the authors have selected the material in the case studies that they needed to support their theoretical considerations with empirical material. The fact that the previous volume in 2008 won the Silvius-Wolansky Award (ITEA) was a stimulus to use the same concept again for our current book. The case studies and thematic chapters are preceded by an introductory part of the book in which we introduce the domain this book deals with and some more general chapters that provide an overall understanding of the domain. At the end of the book we tie together the conclusions of the thematic chapters in order to draw some general conclusions about the nature and possible future of the relation between Maker Education and Technology Education.
More concretely, that leads to the following content of this book. After this opening chapter, two more introductory chapters follow. Chapter 2 is a study about China that shows how Maker Education emerged there. We have chosen China because in this country Maker Education developed at several levels in cooperation. There was a national policy to support developments, expertise at universities to stimulate the development of content and schools and teachers to realize its practice. This makes it likely that Maker Education will remain over time. The sustainability of Maker Education is also the concern of Chapter 3, in which a six-step process is described that has been proven in Denmark to lead to a sustainable practice of Maker Education.
Part 2 contains the case studies at local level. Chapter 4 contains a case study on makerspaces in Dutch libraries with focus on 8–12 year-old children’s informal learning. Chapter 5 is from Mexico and shows how Maker Education
In Part 3, the case study chapters are used as material for reflection on certain themes. Chapter 10 discusses the aspect of pedagogy in Maker Education: what contribution can Maker Education make to learning and what does that require? In Chapter 11 the focus is on the materiality of making and what that means for the way learning takes place. Chapter 12 is on the aspect of social learning, which is characteristic of many Maker Education practices. Chapter 13 deals with the contribution of making activities to learning spatial skills. Chapter 14 discusses the differences and communalities between Maker Education as informal and as formal learning. Chapter 15 is about the sustainability of Maker Education, as shown in the various cases. This chapter compliments Chapter 3, which was written from a more theoretical stance.
The book ends with a synthetic chapter in which we as editors try to bring together the experiences from the various cases as analyzed in the thematic chapters to gain some insights into pros and cons of Maker Education and to imagine a possible future for Maker Education.
Notes
References
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