Youth Engagement and Mobilities of Learning During Making in an Equity-Oriented Makerspace

• In Event: Toward Building Makerspaces for All: New Theories and Practices to Design Inclusive Makerspaces

Abstract

Our recent work has focused on designing equity-oriented makerspaces in community settings that serve youth from nondominant communities (e.g., predominantly African American youth from low-income families). We are particularly interested in how the design of these spaces support these youth in STEM learning and making. Our research questions are:
1. How and why do youth from non-dominant communities engage in making in a community-based makerspace?
2. What ideas, practices, and tools do youth leverage and transform (and for what purposes) during making in a community-based makerspace, and how is this informed by (and further inform) the design of the makerspace?

We investigated four teams of youth, ages 11-13, who engaged in making related to safety and environmental issues in their communities in a community-based makerspace. Over 9 months, teams prototyped 1) a wind-powered phantom jacket for protection against bullies and robbers; 2) a solar powered “rape-alarm” safety jacket for girls their age; 3) a solar-powered, heated jacket for the homeless; and 4) a solar-powered cell-phone case charger to maintain connection with their parents. All prototypes worked and were shared with the community in a celebratory maker workshop.

Our study is grounded in a socioculturally-oriented mobilities of learning framework, where learning involves vertical and horizontal movement, and re-authoring and re-mixing ideas, tools, and practices to create new possibilities for becoming in-practice (Leander, Phillips, & Tayler, 2010). This perspective challenges settled notions of what it means to participate in practice by making visible the boundaries of formal/informal, novice/expert, and past/present/future and how these boundaries change over time and across scale (Rahm, 2014).

Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources during 2013-2015: participant observations in a community-based makerspace (156 hours), conversation groups (72 hours), artifact-based interviews (twice/year), and artifact collections. Data analysis was guided by the selected conceptual framework and included a member check by participants and co-researchers.

Findings indicate that youth purposefully engaged with making projects as they were given opportunities to design and make artifacts associated with their sense of place (e.g., knowledge of and attachment to their communities), even when such projects demanded public dialog and engagement on otherwise taboo topics in STEM (e.g., rape). We see this place-engagement as a process of “deterritorialization” of the making space (Fendler, 2013) – who can make and whose knowledge matters is surfaced and challenged as the histories and geographies of youth makers shape the ways in which they bound the problems they sought to solve and the solutions they developed. Furthermore, in co-opting the processes of making from one that is recreational to one that is informed by marginalization, violence prevention and courageous agency, the youth makers inscribe different kinds of maker identities that are girded with gumption, risk and survival. Finally, youth were recognized by others as humanitarian STEM experts and makers who innovatively identify problems and design solutions for people in need. The cases illustrate how youth expanded boundaries of participation in making, reshaping how making might be refigured towards the public good.

Authors

• Myunghwan Shin, Michigan State University

• Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University

• Day W Greenberg, Michigan State University

• Christina Restrepo Nazar, Michigan State University