Learning While Failing During Maker Activities

• In Event: 35.028 - Failure in the Learning Process: How Learners Experience and Overcome Obstacles Through Resources and Supports

Abstract

While the term 'failure' often has negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields (e.g., Tian & Wang, 2014). It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals, educators and youths, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other non-cognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence (Ryoo et al., 2015; Simpson & Maltese, 2017). Similar to the notion of errors discussed by Tulis and others (Tulis, Steuer, Dresel, 2016) our simple definition of failure is when the outcomes of a maker experience do not meet the intentions of the maker or the task they are making for (e.g., learning activity).

In this research project we are exploring how failure during making and tinkering activities can be a critical step in the process toward deeper learning and engagement with STEM, as well as an acceptance of failure as enhancing the making and tinkering experience by both youths and educators. Our approach is guided by recent research on professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking (Jacobs, Lamb, & Philipp, 2010). We are adapting this to focus on both youths’ and educators’ noticing of failure within making, which includes the following three components: attend, interpret, and respond (refer to Maltese, Simpson, & Anderson, 2018).

For this presentation, we will synthesize our findings from qualitative (videos, interviews, & failure vignette responses) and quantitative (survey) data to address the following research question: How do youths and educators experience and articulate failures within the process of making and tinkering? Across our data, our sample includes approximately 300 youths and 150 educators situated in a variety of settings that implement making and tinkering programs and/or activities including an informal educational setting (i.e., museum), a formal educational setting (i.e., public middle school), and a hybrid setting (i.e., science center running after-school programming at local school sites).

Our results highlight how youths’ and educators’ experiences and views of failure while making is more than likely not associated with negativity or a shameful experience, but as an inherent part of the making and prototyping process. This notion cuts across making tasks (Bevan, 2017) and contexts. Failure seems to be such an ingrained part of the process that it is often not a term used to describe such an experience as failure is viewed as giving up; as a hopeless situation. Participants more often refer to “failure” experiences as mishaps, mistakes, or errors. We will support these results in the poster through specific examples from each data set. As our work advances we plan to design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. As these results become available we will incorporate into the presentation.

Authors

• Adam V. Maltese, Indiana University

• Amber Simpson, Binghamton University - SUNY

• Alice C. Anderson, Minneapolis Institute of Art