Teachers' Perspectives on Student Choice and Participation in Maker Activities at Home

• In Event: Moving Making to Online and Homes Spaces: Lessons for Maker Education

Abstract

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for independent schools requiring educators to adapt to the constraints of social distancing. For example, maker education, in many instances, was moved from the school to the home, presenting novel opportunities and environments to explore making. This study, in part, explored how the work maker education teachers were able to do with their students was impacted by COVID-19.

Theoretical Framework: For the purpose of this study, the concept of third space (Gutierrez et al., 1995), which argues that teachers and students can work in intentional ways against hegemonic power structures and renegotiate what knowledge has value in the classroom, was used as a lens to analyze teachers’ perceptions of how they believe maker education, in what ways, if any, shifts the power dynamics between students and teachers.

Methods and Data Sources: This study interviewed 17 self-identified maker education teachers from 13 different independent schools primarily from the northeast region of the United States about their perspectives of how student choice and participation are mediated by maker education. Semi-structured qualitative one-on-one online interviews were performed of the educators during the height of the pandemic while many were adapting to socially-distanced making and making at home.

Results: An analysis of the responses related to the impacts of COVID-19 on making with students revealed that the maker education teachers were able to reframe the various restrictions as potential opportunities. The participants’ responses illustrated that in the midst of the pandemic they were able to pivot without much support and expand their notions of what making is, what the materials for making can be, and what counts as expertise. Based on the teachers’ responses it became evident that having fewer materials available at home often proved to be beneficial for students’ making, traditional time constraints became more flexible and allowed students more time to brainstorm independently, and students’ learning became more connected to their home-based experience.

Significance: If we pay attention to the ways in which teachers revised their approach to instruction during COVID-19, it motivates us to rethink how we might improve future maker instruction in schools. This study offers possibilities for richer and more authentic making experiences, longer in-person making periods balanced with online instruction and sharing, and a stronger connection between a student’s life outside the classroom and the student’s life inside the classroom.

Author

• Kelly Bird, University of Pennsylvania