Hands, Screwdrivers, and Coding Robots: Material Agency and Embodiment in Learning as Sources of Resistance

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Materiality, Embodiment, and Learning

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze two episodes of robotics team practice where two young women work as the coders of the robot. Taking on a perspective of learning as "emplaced" (Pink, 2011), I explore the intertwined nature of the material, historical, and embodied ecologies of place that produce the roles of coder for each of these youth. Particularly, I focus on the hands as the nexus of knowledge production, bridging the material and the body. Through analysis I examine how material and embodied knowledge developed in relation to one newcomer gives her power to resist oppressive gender narratives that infiltrate STEM and engineering spaces. This has significance for designing, and facilitating, STEM learning environments from engineering classrooms to makerspaces.

Author

• Colin Hennessy Elliott, University of Colorado - Boulder