Connected Learning for Whom? Designing for Equitable Access and Engagement in STEAM Making and Learning Activities

• In Event: 43.010 - Connected Learning and Equitable Participation for Youth: Bridging the Home-School Participation Gap

Abstract

Making and makerspaces have been touted as sites for the cultivation of STEAM learning, interests, and identities (Bowler, 2014; Dixon & Martin, 2014; Fields & King, 2014; Sheridan et al., 2014) but critiqued as creating barriers to entry for females, underrepresented minorities, and students without prior interests in making or STEAM (AAUW, 2000; Lewis, 2015). As these activities and spaces grow in popularity, we need to understand for whom they actually deliver on their promise and how.

We investigate these questions in the context of one set of in-school, choice-based, STEAM making and learning environments, [ProgramX]. [ProgramX] provides almost 30 STEAM challenge sequences, encouraging students to choose which to work on, with whom, and at what pace. Challenges level up like video games, increasing in difficulty and complexity, and introducing students to tools and skills that they can later use to do their own “off-road” projects. Rather than seeking an adult for help, students are encouraged to draw on digital and tangible resources and each other’s expertise. In prior work, we have documented the ways in which [ProgramX]’s design leads to interest development and connected learning, by (1) allowing multiple interest pathways and ways of engaging; and (2) encouraging students to bring in outside interests and practices, develop them, and then take them out into other spaces (XXXX; XXXX).

Here we extend this line of work, asking for whom and how. We argue that the design of [ProgramX] and its placement in school facilitates more equitable access to and engagement in STEAM learning than either out-of-school makerspaces or traditional learning in schools. However, we also explore threats to equity. We draw on data from a year-long, video-ethnographic study of three schools in one mixed-income, racially diverse school district doing [ProgramX], as well as interviews and shorter-term video observations of students and teachers at 12 [ProgramX] schools serving predominantly low income and/or underrepresented minority students. Drawing on work by Vossoughi et al. (2013) and DiGiacomo & Gutiérrez (2016), we analyze equity interactionally, examining ways in which (in)equity is produced or reproduced in interaction.

From this data, we present two cases, an African American girl named Amadia, and a Hispanic American girl named Carmen. By examining their interactions with peers, their teachers, and digital and tangible resources provided by [ProgramX], we explore the ways [ProgramX] did and didn’t provide a more equitable, connected learning environment for them than regular school. Their cases highlight two themes in our larger dataset. On the one hand, many students from non-dominant groups, who have been disengaged or unsuccessful in other classes have developed interests, seen success, and been recognized as experts in [ProgramX]. On the other hand, some of the students who might benefit from [ProgramX] the most have been either: (1) denied access to [ProgramX], because they are seen as needing additional test preparation or remediation; or (2) denied agency during [ProgramX], because they have been identified by teachers, often a priori, as disruptive or incapable of engaging productively in the environment.

Authors

• Kay Ellen Ramey, Northwestern University

• Jaakko Hilppö, University of Helsinki

• Reed Stevens, Northwestern University