Teachers as Makers and Learners: A Study of Teacher Learning in Makerspaces

• In Event: 79.050 - MTCC Roundtable Session 36
  In Roundtable Session: 79.050-6 - Teachers as Learners: Unearthing the Black Boxes of Computer-Supported Technological and Pedagogical Innovations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to report data from a study that examines how and what teachers learn in maker-based professional development, and further, how that learning impacts their teaching practice. This work draws on a variety of theoretical resources; however, it relies most heavily on theories of learning and making (Halverson and Sheridan, 2014; Voussoughi, Hooper, and Escudé, 2016; Buechley, 2014; Buechley, 2016), theories of learning in community (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 2003; Gutierrez and Rogoff, 2003), and theories of teachers as learners (Russ, Sherin, and Sherin, 2015).
In this design-based study, university researchers and teacher educators collaborated with educators from two informal learning institutions (one makerspace located in a children’s museum and another located in a public library) to design professional learning communities for area educators. The term “educator” is broadly construed to include K-16 teachers, paraprofessionals, and other informal educators working in the communities surrounding the makerspaces. The collected data includes semi-structured interviews with both designer-participants and educator-participants, as well as an interaction analysis with educator participants, wherein educators watch video of themselves engaged in making and reflect upon what they were learning in that moment, and what, if any impact that learning made on their teaching practice or beliefs.
Employing a grounded approach to data analysis (Charmaz, 2000), this study addresses a gap in knowledge about teacher professional learning related to how a teacher’s professional identity interacts with their life-wide identity as a learner (Russ, Sherin, and Sherin, 2016).
This knowledge contributes to a growing body of scholarship that examines how learners mobilize learning identities across learning contexts (e.g. Everette, et. al, 2017; Leander and Boldt, 2012). Further, this study examines how reconceptualizing teaching as a creative, maker-based practice shifts or reifies educator beliefs, objectives, and practice to be more inquiry-driven (Brennan, 2015a; 2015b). In addition, this study will examine how the community-based nature of this professional learning impacts educator perspectives about where and how professional learning occurs. Lastly, this study responds to long-held calls for the work of informal learning settings to interrupt top-down curricular paradigms, which fail to recognize community-based expertise as a curricular asset for diverse learners (Apple, 1979; Nasir, Hand, and Taylor, 2008; Barron, et. al, 2014).

Author

• Emily Ward Schindler, University of Wisconsin - Madison