Making Equity Explicit: On the Pedagogical and Sociopolitical Dimensions of Learning Within Making

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

Abstract

Articulations of equity within the Maker Movement have not adequately wrestled with the cultural, political and economic tensions and contradictions across narratives that define and shape making. What counts as making? According to whose values and histories? What are the broader purposes of making, and in what kinds of histories and visions for the future are they anchored? What are the political and pedagogical implications of various approaches to making? How do they connect to (or ignore) existing research on race, culture, epistemology and power in learning? We analyze existing designs and research that address how teaching and learning is theorized and how purposes of making are conceptualized.

Constructionism (Papert, 1993) is a foundational theoretical framework for the Maker Movement because of its “hands-on, minds-on” perspective. Constructionist perspectives have not treated explicit attention to pedagogy as central to learning. This omission has consequences for equity-oriented work and using socio-cultural theories of learning (Cole, 1996; Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003; Nasir, et. al., 2006) to center the role of pedagogy and the social accomplishment of learning.

We used several methods of research and types of data: 1) literature review of research related to the Maker Movement on prominent educative practices and the theoretical frameworks that inform them (Vossoughi & Bevan, 2014); 2) content analysis of a sampling of mission statements for maker spaces in international and U.S. national contexts; and 3) ethnographic data from a tinkering afterschool program where equity is explicitly designed for. The ethnographic analysis focused on moment-to-moment and long-term interactions between educators and youth.

Findings suggest the need for more complex theoretical tools and precise social-political articulations. A growing focus on facilitation, sharing and transparency are evident across studies. Tensions and limitations regarding analyses of pedagogy are tied to issues of equity. Studies of learning in the context of making tend to foreground individual learning processes rather than joint activity and/or explicit analyses of teaching. We argue that treating sociocultural experience and interaction as constitutive of collective and individual sense-making address more nuanced, multifaceted views of pedagogy, including moments when explicit forms of teaching are appropriate.

Findings suggest that The Maker Movement generally treats innovation as synonymous with democracy and positive social change (Hatch, 2014). We see the need to complicate this assumption. First, scientific experimentation and invention are not politically neutral or benign activities (Medin & Bang, 2014). The politics of technology and innovation—and implications for the pedagogical design of maker spaces—is largely unexplored within the literature. Our content analysis illuminates distinct narratives of making between programs based inside and outside the United States. There is a dominant focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. context. Programs in Latin America, often highlight community needs and relations.

This work pushes the research and practice of making to form a substantive and politically grounded approach to equity. We explore how the design of making activities and pedagogical environments can emerge from a standpoint of collaborative meaning making, rather than a focus on economic and entrepreneurial goals.

Authors

• Paula K. Hooper, Exploratorium

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Meg Elena Escudé, Exploratorium