Encouraging Iterative Design in Tinkering as an Equity-Oriented Pedagogical Practice

• In Event: Reclaiming "Failure"? The Iterative Dimensions of Learning Through Making

Abstract

Background: The California Tinkering Afterschool Network (CTAN) formed a research-practice partnership in 2013 involving The Exploratorium, Techbridge, Community Science Workshop, and Discovery Cube in order to 1) share pedagogical practices; 2) conduct joint analysis in order to build, test, and implement pedagogical resources for educators; and 3) share research findings and resources with research, policy, and education communities. The partnership placed equity at the center of tinkering pedagogy and program design. This paper highlights how our partnership focused on drafts and iteration as a pedagogical approach to reframing failure in equity-oriented STEM-rich tinkering programs.

Purpose: In CTAN, we focus on “tinkering” which is a genre of “making” that involves a “playful, experimental, iterative style of engagement” requiring “continually reassessing [one’s] goals, exploring new paths, and imagining new possibilities” (Resnick & Rosenbaum, 2013, p. 164). This has the potential to provide students from low-income historically marginalized communities with multiple entry points into STEM while creating room to bring diverse ways of knowing and everyday practices into their projects. However, to fully engage in tinkering toward transformative STEM and art inquiry we suggest that afterschool educators play a crucial role in encouraging creativity, critical thinking, and collaborative problem solving. This pedagogical stance promotes an asset-based approach toward students, encourages student talk and meaning making from across their lived experiences, and employs iteration as a means to reframe failure in the design process. This work is part of a larger effort to support educational sanctuaries where young people can take intellectual risks, explore new questions, and envision themselves as active participants in the process of creating new ways of knowing (Espinoza, 2011; Vossoughi et al., 2013).

Theoretical Framework & Methods: We conceptualize learning as occurring during everyday activities and according to valued cultural practices situated within ongoing communities of practices (Lave, 2012; Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006). Drawing on interpretive participant observation privileging the “immediate and local meanings of actions” (Erickson 1986, p. 119), our partnership studied themes emerging across afterschool settings to understand and support high-quality equity-oriented tinkering pedagogy.

Findings: We found that encouraging iteration informed short-term conceptual gains and long-term dispositional gains for students. Specifically, students would refer to imperfect designs not as failures but as prototypes for future project designs. To create these safe environments where young people took intellectual risks, educators discussed the pedagogical tensions between correcting flaws in student designs versus setting up low-stakes opportunities to allow students to adapt and create new prototypes to improve overall project designs. Through joint analysis the team identified nuanced ways to encourage iterations without assuming that the process of troubleshooting and redesigning projects were seamless or safe activities for students. Educators also recognized that they were reorganizing a learning process that often highlighted failure through high-stakes testing rather than supporting a social process that incorporated group planning, prototyping, reflecting, and redesigning as a valued practice. The iterative process became part of the social, material, and curricular expectations in communities allowing students to learn through playful tinkering activities.

Authors

• Molly Victoria Shea, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Jean J. Ryoo, Exploratorium

• Emily McLeod, TechBridge

• José Sandoval, Environmental Science Workshop

• Emilyn Green

• Nicole Bulalacao

• Linda Kekelis, Techbridge