What Is a Maker Mind-Set? Exploring "Thinking Outside the Box" Through e-Textiles and BioDesign Making

• In Event: Structured Poster Session: Analytical Frameworks to Advance the Study of Making: Themes in Research and Development on Makerspaces

Abstract

The Maker Movement emphasizes both maker practices and the maker mindset. As coined by Dougherty (2013), numerous scholars have worked on identifying the core attributes of this mindset including a “growth mindset” (Dweck, 1999), the ability to take intellectual risks (Wilkinson, Anzivino, & Petrich, 2016), an interest in questioning and exploring the surrounding world (Brahms & Crowley, 2016), and an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving and creation (Regalla, 2016). However, few studies (e.g., Chu, Quek, Bhangaonkar, Ging, & Sridharamurthy, 2015) as of yet have focused on capturing these characteristics in practice.
In this poster, we provide a framework for measuring one particular attribute of the maker mindset — the ability to think outside the box. As Wilkinson et al. (2016), Kalil (2013), and Dougherty (2013) describe, one’s ability to think outside the box can be connected to one’s ability to take intellectual risks, and eventually be innovative within STEM fields. Our study focuses on whether this ability increases based on experience with different kinds of making. We worked with 23 high school students over three years on two areas of making: electronic textiles and biological design. In e-textiles, students created an interactive centerpiece and a sign. In the new area of biodesign, student created bio-pigment logos and biosensors, including a physical bacterial sensor that glowed, and a proposed hypothetical biosensor to address a real-world scenario. We documented their final artifacts: interactive canvas sign, hypothetical biosensors. Following both workshops, we interviewed students and asked them to redesign an existing product: a talking toy after e-textiles, and bakers’ yeast after biodesign. We also asked about future work in both areas. We developed a coding scheme to measure students’ capacities for thinking outside the box in order to answer the question of how these different modalities of making can either help or hinder this ability.
We found that students’ final biodesign maker scenario projects illustrated a greater capacity for thinking outside the box compared to their e-textiles projects. This result was most likely influenced by the nature of the maker activity itself. Students had to produce their e-textiles projects in real life (a light-up canvas sign). However, their biodesign final projects were hypothetical (e.g., genetically altered succulents, and bacteria-spraying sprinklers). While these results might suggest that students’ thinking was limited by the actualities of e-textiles production and freed by the hypothetical nature of the biodesign workshop, post-interviews revealed that students had the same level of thinking outside the box after both experiences.
Overall, these preliminary findings recommend the importance of having students engage not only with physical making, but also with the world of speculation and imagination. Further research is needed on how to structure these activities in order to develop this aspect of the maker mindset. While our maker scenarios fostered productive out of the box thinking, they only did so within particular contexts. Here, connections to critique practices developed and employed in design and art studios (Sawyer, 2012; Litts, Lui, Widman, Walker & Kafai, 2017) might be helpful in addressing this gap.

Authors

• Emma Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Debora Lui, University of Pennsylvania

• Justice Toshiba Walker, University of Pennsylvania

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania