Making Experts: Relational Expertise in a School Makerspace

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Spaces for Emerging Expertise (Table 15)

Abstract

While existing research has illuminated the emergence of intersecting knowledge practices in school makerspaces, knowledge on the mechanisms of boundary crossing of expertise is scarce. Using video-records of 4–6th grade students’ and their teachers’ interactions in a school makerspace, this ethnographic case study used mediated discourse analysis to investigate relational expertise, a mode of boundary crossing that entails engaging with one’s own knowledge, while recognizing and responding to others’ expertise. The results demonstrate how relational expertise was mediated by participants and material objects, and emerged through collective mechanisms of identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. The study reveals how relational expertise is dependent on relative engagement with the participants’ expertise and motives together with the material resources of the makerspace.

Authors

• Jasmiina Leskinen, University of Eastern Finland

• Kristiina Kumpulainen, University of British Columbia

• Anu Kajamaa, University of Oulu