We share a case study of a 10-year makerspace design process and identify key features for sustaining community–museum relationships over an extended period of work, which we call community-informed design
This guide shares some of the successes and challenges behind the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Cardboard City exhibition and our partnership with museums across the country through Cardboard Collaborative.
The Cardboard Collaborative is the product of 10 years of work at the Science Museum of Minnesota and part of a larger collaboration with local community organizations to center BIPOC family priorities and experiences. This guide is intended to share what they have learned and support others to create their own cardboard maker worlds.
The University of Montana spectrUM Discovery Area will implement “Making Across Montana” —a project to engage K–12 students and teachers in rural and tribal communities with making and tinkering. In collaboration with K–12 education partners in the rural Bitterroot Valley and on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the museum will develop a mobile making and tinkering exhibition and education program. The exhibition will be able to travel to K–12 schools statewide. The project team will develop a K–12 teacher professional development workshop, along with accompanying curriculum resources and supplies. The traveling program and related materials will build schools’ capacity to incorporate making and tinkering—and informal STEM experiences more broadly—into their teaching.
The Lewis H. Latimer House Museum will develop a more cohesive education program that reflects both the museum's resources and the needs of local schools. The museum's deputy director and Tinkering Lab educator will work together to design a curriculum that meets current New York State and city standards, enabling the museum to more effectively serve schools in the community with object-based learning experiences. Packets of educational materials will be developed and made available for school teachers to download and use in their classrooms prior to and following visits to the museum. Target schools will be actively involved in the process of testing and utilizing the products. Project results will be shared with internal and external stakeholders to sustain long-term improvement and enhance institutional capacity.
Our project focuses on iterative improvements to a cardboard-focused maker exhibition to engage more families in engineering practices.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Described by Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune and Thompson (2017) as “a range of activities that blend design and technology, including textile crafts, robotics, electronics, digital fabrication, mechanical repair or creation, tinkering with everyday appliances, digital storytelling, arts and crafts—in short, fabricating with new technologies to create almost anything” (p. 445), making can open new possibilities for applied, interdisciplinary learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Martin, 2015), in ways that decenter and democratize access to ideas, and promote the construction
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jill CastekMichelle Schira HagermanRebecca Woodland
"Making and Tinkering" links science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning (STEM) to the do-it-yourself "maker" movement, where people of all ages "create and share things in both the digital and physical world" (Resnick & Rosenbaum, 2013). This paper examines designing what Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) call "contexts for tinkerability" within the social design experiment of El Pueblo Mágico (EPM) -- a design approach organized around a cultural historical view of learning and development. We argue that this theoretical perspective reorganizes normative approaches to STEM education
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lisa SchwartzDaniela DigiacomoKris Gutierrez
Maker Education scholarship is accumulating increasingly complex understandings of the kinds of learning associated with maker practices along with principles and pedagogies that support such learning. However, even as large investments are being made to spread maker education, there is little understanding of how organizations that are intended targets of such investments learn to develop new maker related educational programs. Using the framework of Expansive Learning, focusing on organizational learning processes resulting in new and unfolding forms of activity, this paper begins to fill
In informal science contexts, the word tinkering describes a learning process that combines art, science, and technology through hands-on inquiry. With the growth in popularity of the making and tinkering movements nationwide, these practices are increasingly making their way into early childhood environments where they have great promise to positively impact the early STEM learning experiences of young children. This 2-day conference hosted at the Exploratorium in San Francisco will bring together stakeholders exploring applications of tinkering in informal early childhood environments. The conference will provide opportunities to explore the role, value, and challenges associated with implementing meaningful tinkering interventions in learning environments serving young children. The project seeks to 1) Convene stakeholders from the tinkering and early childhood programs; and 2) further the exploration and evolution of practitioner and researcher knowledge about tinkering in early childhood contexts. The long-term goal is to support more young children being introduced to STEM learning through tinkering's adaptable approaches to STEM-learning that align with the developmental needs of this young population.
This project will collaboratively analyze and document the state of the field of STEM-rich tinkering in informal early childhood contexts. Additionally, the project will deepen relationships across the early childhood tinkering ecosystem. Additional outcomes include an effort to provide tangible resources to the field highlighting current promising practices and future opportunities for development. The conference will also provide an understanding of how tinkering interventions may contribute to the development of STEM interest, identity and learning amongst early childhood audiences. Finally, the conference will bring together research and practitioners to explore how tinkering in early childhood settings can be used effectively to meet the needs of diverse learners including learners from underserved and underrepresented communities. The project will recruit a total of 75 participants with backgrounds in the field of tinkering and STEM learning, early childhood research, and professional development practices representing a diverse set of institutions and organizations. Research questions for the conference will focus on: 1) What types of supports and professional development do early childhood educators need to facilitate early STEM learning through tinkering? 2) What types of built environment and hands-on materials best support young children's ability to learn STEM content and practices through tinkering? 3) What types of strategies best support caregiver involvement in young children's learning? 4) What is the role of early childhood tinkering in young children?s STEM learning, interest, and identity development? 5) How can culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies be used to ensure equity across a diversity of young learners and their families? To answer these research questions the project will use qualitative methods before, during and post-conference. Research methods will include a landscape analysis identifying needs of participants, surveys, observations and informal interviews with participants.
This Conference award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This three-year research and implementation project empowers middle school LatinX youth to employ their own assets and funds of knowledge to solve community problems through engineering. Only 7% of adults in the STEM job cluster are of Hispanic/Latino origin. There is a continuing need for filling engineering jobs in our current and future economy. This project will significantly broaden participation of LatinX youth in engineering activities at a critical point as they make career decisions. Design Squad Global LatinX expands on a tested model previously funded by NSF and shown to be successful. It will enable LatinX youth to view themselves as designers and engineers and to build from their strengths to expand their skills and participation in science and engineering. The project goals are to: 1) develop an innovative inclusive approach to informal engineering education for LatinX students that can broaden their engineering participation and that of other underrepresented groups, (2) to galvanize collaborations across diverse local, national, and international stakeholders to create a STEM learning ecosystem and (3) to advance knowledge about a STEM pedagogy that bridges personal-cultural identity and experience with engineering knowledge and skills. Project deliverables include a conceptual framework for a strength-based approach to engineering education for LatinX youth, a program model that is asset based, a collection of educational resources including a club guide for how to scaffold culturally responsive engineering challenge activities, an online training course for club leaders, and a mentoring strategy for university engineering students working with middle school youth. Project partners include the global education organization, iEARN, the Society of Women Engineers, and various University engineering programs.
The research study will employ an experimental study design to evaluate the impact on youth participating in the Design Squad LatinX programs. The key research questions are (1) Does participation increase students' positive perceptions of themselves and understanding of engineering and global perspectives? (2) To what extent do changes in understanding engineering vary by community (site) and by student characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity)? (3) Do educators and club leaders increase their positive perceptions of youths' funds of knowledge and their own understanding of engineering? and (4) Do university mentors increase their ability to lead informal engineering/STEM education with middle school youth? A sample from 72 local Design Squad LatinX clubs with an enrollment of 10-15 students will be drawn with half randomly assigned to the participant condition and half to the control condition. Methods used include pre and post surveys, implementation logs for checks on program implementation, site visits to carry out observations, focus groups with students and interviews with adult leaders. Data will be analyzed by estimating hierarchical linear models with observations. In addition, in-situ ethnographically-oriented observations as well as interviews at two sites will be used to develop qualitative case studies.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.