Making Toward What Ends? A Relational View of Learning and Equity

• In Event: 18.026 - Equitable Pedagogies and Relationality in Making

Abstract

Objectives: A growing number of researchers argue that making engages young people in creative investigations of the material and social world, and broadens participation in STEM learning (Blikstein, 2013; Martin, 2015; Sheridan et. al., 2014). While this literature largely focuses on the what and how of making, it risks paying inadequate attention to the why: the purposes, values and social futures being designed for. When addressed, the larger goals of making tend to be framed as innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper takes a critical view of this discourse and argues for a relational approach to making. Analyzing learning in the Tinkering Afterschool program, we highlight the making of artifacts as interwoven with the making of relationships and possible futures (individual and collective).

Theoretical framework: We define learning as shifting participation over time, a mediated process that contributes to the development of the environment itself (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 2003). We also foreground culture and equity (Authors, 2006; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), asking political and epistemological questions such as STEM knowledge for whom and for what purposes? (Authors, 2016). Finally, we draw on theories of embodied learning (Goodwin, 2000; 2003) to analyze the materiality of educational interactions, and the ways learning environments embody alternative social relations.

Methods & Data Sources: We draw on three years of ethnographic data collected in the Tinkering Afterschool Program, which serves children and youth from immigrant and diasporic backgrounds in a working-class urban community. Data sources include: 30 extensive ethnographic field notes (co-authored by the program director [Author 1] and the researcher [Author 2]), 100 hours of video recording of learning interactions, 30 recordings of reflective debriefs among staff, photographs, and interviews. Situated within this larger data set, the debriefs are the central focus of our paper.

We utilized social-interactional methods (McDermott & Raley, 2011) to study ensembles of adults, youth and children engaged in tinkering activity. Our analysis focuses on the making of relationships in and through the making of artifacts, the forms of pedagogical reflection that support these interactions, and how the quality of relationships shifted over time.

Findings: Analyzing these learning interactions alongside the forms of reflection expressed in staff debriefs over time, we found 1) a laminated quality of interaction (Authors, 2010) whereby forms of mentorship across adults and youth reflect and support pedagogical relationships with children in the setting; 2) a growing intentionality and reflexivity with regards to the role of gesture, gaze and language in learning; and 3) new perceptions of children’s agency and potential for intellectual and creative activity that both arose from and gave life to new forms of relationality.

Significance: A growing awareness of the social and political implications of assistance expanded both the forms of pedagogy enacted by the staff, and the broader purposes of tinkering. These findings highlight the centrality of social relations to equity-oriented making, and complicate the constructionist tendency to focus on individual learning processes. They also provide dynamic resources for professional development, an area we have identified as essential to substantively expanding educational opportunity.

Authors

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Meg Elena Escudé, Exploratorium

• Fan Kong, University of Washington