25.045 - Creative Resource Leveraging and Critical Mobilities in Equity-Oriented Makerspaces

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Makerspaces are uniquely positioned to facilitate access to STEM when they incorporate porosity of boundaries for greater accessibility and fluid movement of maker resources. As researcher-practitioners interested in expanding making for diverse youth in STEM, we ask how youth from marginalized communities access, mobilize, and leverage maker resources toward personally meaningful ends. We explore how youth creatively re-mix and re-negotiate resources by making connections across previously siloed (but highly dynamic) funds of knowledge towards transformation/expansion. Papers raise new ideas/questions around how youth build understandings for themselves and others in STEM through making in new and powerful spaces. All studies draw upon youth participatory methodologies, and take place in equity-oriented community-based makerspaces. Participating youth will join via Google Hangout.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Informal Learning Environment Research

Chair

• Edna Tan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Papers

• Creative Connections: Disrupting the Norm in a Community-Based Makerspace - Sarah Keenan, Michigan State University; Day W Greenberg, Michigan State University

• Expansive Learning Through Counternarratives in Co-Constructed Multimodal Cases of Engineering Work Over Time - Christina Restrepo Nazar, Michigan State University; Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University

• "Make Your Dream a Reality": Mapping the Nodes of Criticalities in African American Boys' Making Endeavors - Edna Tan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Discussant

• Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University