Exploring Youth Agency Through Artist Statements

• In Event: Measuring Making: Methods, Tools, and Strategies for Capturing Learning, Participation, and Engagement in Maker Activities

Abstract

Philosophers, theorists, and researchers have time and again called for teaching that connects to learners’ lived experiences, allows for agency, and respects the learner (Dewey, 1938/1963; Papert, 1980; Sieler, 2000). Maker activities are often emphasized for their ability to allow learners to create projects of personal significance—to provide space for agency (Fields, Kafai, & Searle, 2012; Kafai, Searle, Martinez & Brayboy, 2014). Agency as understood in this study is creative self-expression achieved through using the knowledge and practices of a particular context which helps individuals develop their identities and perhaps advance their positions in the world (Barton & Tan, 2010; Basu, Barton, Claremont, & Locke 2009; Hoechsmann & Poyantz, 2012; Sheridan, Clark, & Williams, 2013). Funds of knowledge researchers have found that when youth are given a space for self-expression—an aspect of agency—learners feel valued, and more engaged and interested in learning (Basu & Barton, 2007; Basu et al., 2009; Hammond, 2001). Including the production of art in a learning environment can give youth a means for creative self-expression. Maker activities through multidisciplinary projects can provide both a purpose for learning content (Pepper & Glosson, 2013) and a way to value the skills youth have (Kafai Fields, & Searle 2013). Maker activities have the rich potential to help foster learning while providing space for individuals to have agency within the learning environment.

One critique of the maker movement is, while maker activities often incorporate teaching techniques from studio art classrooms, maker artifacts tend to not include art-forward projects (Buechely, 2013; Vossoughi & Bevan, 2013). By art-forward projects I am referring to projects where the expression of the idea and emotion is more central than the technology that helped to create the project. Maker projects tend to be tech-forward, wherein the technology is primary and the expression of the idea or emotion is a secondary consequence. In an audit of the covers of Make magazine, three images were prominent: robots, electronics, and vehicles—projects that are successful because the technology does something, not because they convey an idea or emotion (Buechley, 2013). This study explores if focusing on the arts in a maker workshops allows for youth to have agency. In this workshop individuals created one minute sound pieces, built their own handmade speakers, and wrote artists statements as part of an art exhibit.

I focus on the role of the artist statement from helping to frame the learning environment as an art and science workshop, to providing a space for youth to reflect on the work they produced, to being a tool to glean if youth had agency. In exploring agency, the artist statements are able to reveal layers of information for artifacts both mediate and expand one’s identity and therefore one’s agency (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Through concentrating on the arts in this workshop youth were able to share ideas centered on themselves, their experiences, and their skills through exerting their agency.

Author

• Emma Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology