1 ‘Maker Education’: Rich, But Fuzzy
We have made quite a journey along different Maker education examples and reflections. In Chapter 1 we already noted that there is quite a variety of Maker education practices. The term Maker education’ seems to be an umbrella term for a great variety of activities of which the main common feature is that artefacts are made. But apart from that, everything seems to vary. The only other limiting feature is perhaps the educational setting – that can be formal, informal or nonformal education, and all cases we have seen are either formal or informal education. Nonformal education settings, such as people having a workshop at home in which they perform do-it-yourself hobby activities do not seem to get the label ‘Maker education’, at least not as far as the literature goes. The level of education does vary: primary, secondary and tertiary education are all represented in our sample of Maker education cases. We have also seen both high-tech and low-tech practices. The purpose of the Maker activities also varies. The focus can be on the personal acquisition of making
This complex image of Maker education suggests a certain richness. Apparently making can be used for different purposes in different settings with different means and in different ways. At the same time, this makes the term ‘Maker education’ rather fuzzy. It can mean almost anything in which making has a place. That makes it difficult to conclude this book with general statements, as there are always examples that do not fit with these conclusions. Yet, we will make an effort to write some general observations having seen the set of cases and the thematic chapters.
2 Worldview
Perhaps it needs a deeper look to see what is really common in the enormous variety of Maker education practices. If making is the one common feature, then where does it come from? Is there, perhaps, a deeper, underlying motive for the focus on making? Is it related to a fundamental view on reality and on people? In other words, is it related to a worldview? The term ‘worldview’ is used to indicate a coherent set of convictions about what exists, how it came to exist, what it is heading towards, what is right and what is wrong, what we can know about it and how we can act in that reality (Vidal, 2008). Worldviews can be inspired by a religion, but not necessarily so. We all have a worldview, whether we are aware of it or not. Becoming aware of it can help to understand the way we think and act. For the case of Maker education: it can help us understand why making and learning to make is so much valued. In the next sections we will explore some aspects of the worldview that seems to drive Maker education. Most of these aspects have been mentioned in the case descriptions and in the thematic chapters, while some are our own observations.
3 View on Materiality
We live in a world in which virtuality is highly valued. We create a variety of virtual connections between people: the Internet, mobile phone connections, social media, etcetera. On Facebook we have friends that perhaps we have never met in person. Our only connection with those friends is virtual. We create games and other virtual worlds in which we move around without
4 View on Science and Technology
Materiality also plays a role in our view on science and technology and their relation. Science is by its very nature an activity that strives for abstract knowledge. In particular the natural sciences do not aim for describing particular situations but for deriving abstract concepts and ‘laws’ from those particular situations. That way of thinking has proven to be of great value. Science enables us to understand our world in a deep and fundamental way, precisely because of the abstractions it makes. Yet, these insights do not yet change the world. That is what technology is for. Technology does not (only) describe but it aims at changing the world based on ideas about what is ‘better’ and what is ‘progress’. That makes technology a very normative activity, contrary to science that merely describes (although there are of course norms for what we accept as knowledge but the content of that knowledge itself is not normative but only descriptive). But not only differs technology from science in that it is normative and not just descriptive, it also differs in that one cannot get around the concreteness and materiality of reality in technology, whereas in science abstraction is key. Here again Maker education can be seen as a correction for
5 View on Human Responsibility towards Nature
Making means that we use natural resources that we transform them into something useful or beautiful. Some of these natural resources can be re-used once we no longer use or value what we have made, but others cannot be re-used. Making makes us aware of the fact that there is a limit to the use of natural resources. Thus making can also make us aware of a certain responsibility that we have with respect to natural resources. Of course, we can also develop that awareness through the manifold data and statistics that we read daily in our newspapers and magazines. But what more direct way to become aware of the limits to natural resources than direct experience. Once we have cut a piece of paper or cardboard into parts and pieces, the paper or cardboard cannot again be cut into parts and pieces. Only if the resource is recycled and reworked into cardboard and paper, it becomes again available for our use, be it that we can often see the marks that it is not anymore in its original quality. Maker education is somewhat ambiguous here. It can tempt us to use materials for the fun of the making activity and makes us ignore and overlook the effect our making activities have on the availability of natural resources. At the same time, making is a very direct way to raise an awareness of the limits to natural resource use. Sometimes making activities focus on this, for instance by using recycled materials. Such an activity can show how much value there can be in discarded materials. What is not of use anymore for one person may be of great value for someone else. Using recycled materials contributes to the sustainable availability of natural resources. The issue of sustainability is one that gets increasing attention in education and in society in general. Maker education can clearly play an important role here. This, however, assumes that
6 View on Humans
Materiality as part of reality can be part of our worldview, as noted a few sections ago. That includes a view on ourselves as human beings. But there is another aspect of our view on people that is related to making. It has to do with the fact that making requires and develops human creativity. The extent to which it does that depends on the extent to which designing has a role in Maker education. Sometimes pre-made designs are used and Maker education is limited to the making only. However as we saw in the various cases, Maker education is mostly a combination of designing and making. And even when no real design work is included, the making itself also requires some creativity in the use of tools and machines. Maker education therefore supports a worldview in which humans are seen as inherently creative beings. In many worldviews, that will also be seen as something that makes them unique. Although it is more and more claimed that robots and computers can display signs of creativity, such worldviews will claim that robots and computers do not have a ‘mind’ in the way humans have, and therefore are not creative in the full human sense. In a similar way humans can make in a way that robots cannot. Robots follow a program but humans can deviate from whatever at least partially determines their behavior (and we have become increasingly aware that there are all sorts of biological and social factors that do determine our behavior to a certain extent). If in our worldview creativity is one of those characteristics that makes us unique, then enhancing creativity by making is highly valued. This may well be one of the underlying values that explain the popularity of Maker education. A third element in the view on humans that gets increasing attention nowadays is the equal value of all human individuals and the need to
7 View on Teaching and Learning
Related to the previous issue is our view on teaching and learning. If creativity is what makes Maker education valuable, among other things, then a certain view on teaching and learning is also implied. Creativity is not enhanced when learners are told exactly what to do. For a long time our view on teaching and learning was that a learner is an empty vessel that needs to be filled by the teacher. Now we hold a more constructivist view on teaching and learning. This does not necessarily imply that we see knowledge as a social construct only. Realists will maintain the idea that there is an objective reality outside us that determines whether our beliefs are ‘true’ or ‘false’, which in epistemology is usually seen as the difference between beliefs and knowledge (problematic as it may be to conceptualize exactly what ‘true’ and ‘false’ are, but at least they are somehow related to a reality that exists outside our thinking). This constructivist view on teaching and learning is a most suitable approach for Maker education and thus Maker education can thrive when we see teaching as a process in which we create an environment in which the learner can actively acquire new knowledge and skills. This entails that learning should take place in projects in which the ownership is divided over teacher and learner. The teacher should have some ownership as we know by research that learning does not take place without an active role of the teachers, not to steer but to stimulate. Making also allows for creating communities of learners when the making processes take place in groups of learners. Creating learning communities is also an element in the current dominant view on teaching and learning and Maker education is a suitable context for that, assuming that the making is not only done on an individual basis (which, of course, is always an option in making activities).
8
The many claims about the values of Maker education and its learning effects are not yet supported by a lot of educational research. The number of references to educational research on Maker education in the book, both in the case studies and in the thematic chapters, is relatively small. Perhaps the fact that Maker education is more associated with informal than with formal education explains that. Measuring learning outcomes is seen as more important in formal education than in informal education because of the allocative function of formal education. Within the small body of research literature on Maker education, the role of teachers is perhaps the smallest issue studied. It would be important, though, to know what Pedagogical Content Knowledge coaches and teachers should have in order to help learners acquire making skills and achieve wider learning goals. Although a certain fuzziness is admitted by most advocates of this concept, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is still a term that regularly features in the research literature. One of the unclear elements is the concept of the meaning of the term ‘knowledge’. In epistemology the effort has always been to distinguish between beliefs and knowledge. The term ‘knowledge’ is then reserved for only these beliefs that are in some way or other ‘true’, as we have remarked earlier in this chapter when we discussed realism versus constructivism. In PCK literature it seems, however, that any belief a teacher may hold is counted as part of her/his PCK. In that respect the term Pedagogical Content Beliefs or PCB would be more appropriate. It must be acknowledged that knowing false beliefs of teachers is no less relevant than knowing true beliefs, but it does not help conceptually to reckon all beliefs as knowledge. In the Maker education literature, research into teachers’ beliefs is still scarce, irrespective of whether they are true or false beliefs. Obviously, there is still work to be done here.
9 The Lasting Value of Maker Education
More research support to show that the claims of Maker education do get realized would help enhance the sustainability of Maker education. In the introductory chapter we have already shown what value Maker education can have. One of the issues we discussed there was the relation between Maker education and (Design and) Technology education. Having seen examples of the practice of Maker education as well as theoretical reflections on that practice, we can conclude that both Maker education and (Design and) Technology have their
In summary, there is place for both Maker education and (Design and) Technology education and this book provides knacks as to how they can both flourish and what is needed for the sustainability of both.
Reference
Vidal, C. (2008). What is a worldview. In H. van Belle & J. van der Veken (Eds.), Nieuwheid denken. De wetenschappen en het creatieve aspect van de werkelijkheid [Thinking novelty. Sciences and the creative aspect of reality) (pp. 1–12). Acco.