Making Makers: Tracing STEM Identity in Rural Communities

• In Event: Mapping the Terrain: Designing, Supporting, and Understanding Maker Educators in Rural Communities

Abstract

Makerspaces open up the opportunity for a more diverse population of students to participate, yet have also been described as having an “equity problem”, meaning that despite claims of inclusiveness and opportunities for all, making remains the domain of white, middle class males at the expense of other representations for what it means to be a maker, particularly for women and people of color (Martin, Dixon, & Betser, 2018).
Situated within a rural community in the upper midwest, we sought to eliminate barriers of entry to engineering-related communities of practice by training local teens to become maker mentors and staff a mobile makerspace in their community. This project was designed both to establish credibility and sustainability for the makerspace in small, rural communities, and to understand whether and how young people who serve as mentors develop robust STEM identities and expertise while participating in a community of practice.
Following Nasir and Cooks (2009), we bring a communities of practice frame to our inquiry, focusing on inbound and peripheral learning and identity trajectories as a mechanism for representing the maker mentor experience (Wenger, 1998). Maker mentors moved along individual trajectories to achieve varying levels of membership in the community of practice. Those mentors who maintained an inbound trajectory joined and became full participants; whereas those mentors with peripheral trajectories never fully participated (Nasir & Cooks, 2009). These trajectories provide a lens to understand what types of programming and maker activities encourage high school students toward becoming full participants in an Engineering-centric community of practice.
Through a longitudinal case study, we traced the individual trajectories of five maker mentors over two years. We collected a range of data including preliminary interest surveys; video recordings, field notes, and attendance records from monthly mentor trainings; interviews with mentors throughout their time in the program; and audio and video recordings, pictures, and field notes from events mentors facilitated. In addition, we tracked the mentor’s knowledge and skills gained over time; their participation in maker projects; and their pedagogical practices.
Overall, we find that inbound and peripheral trajectories were not necessarily influenced by gender or interests in particular types of making. We found that maker-mentors who participated in mentorship training activities, collaborated with their peers on making projects, and co-facilitated events throughout the community were more likely to follow an inbound trajectory. Maker-mentors who participated in training activities and collaborative making projects, but only facilitated one or two of the twelve community events never moved beyond the periphery. The maker-mentor program was particularly successful as maker-mentors could explore areas of making that were in line with their interests while still being a part of a larger community of practice.
We offer lessons learned from including a mentorship component in a pre-college maker program, an unusual design feature that afforded more opportunities to create inbound trajectories. Understanding learning and identity trajectories will allow us to continually improve pre-college STEM programming and education opportunities that build on students’ funds of knowledge.

Authors

• Jessie Marie Nixon, Utah State University

• Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Andy Stoiber, University of Wisconsin