Skip to main content
COMMUNITY:
Research Case Study

STEM Learning While Making: All Lives Can't Matter Until Black Lives Matter

July 1, 2018 | Public Programs

This is a story about learning STEM content and practices while making objects. It is also a story about how that learning is contextualized in one young man’s disruption of racism simply by trying to learn how gears work. Our project, Investigating STEM Literacies in MakerSpaces (STEMLiMS), focuses on how adults and youth use representations to accomplish tasks in STEM disciplines in formal and informal making spaces (Tucker-Raymond, Gravel, Kohberger, & Browne, 2017). Making is an interdisciplinary endeavor that may involve mechanical and electrical engineering, digital literacies and programming, mathematics and any number of science disciplines depending on the topic of what one is making. At the same time, makers pay attention to aesthetics—the look, feel, and artistic dimensions of their projects—and to the messages or ideas they want to express. Messages in making are important, because they reflect what makers experience and care about.

TEAM MEMBERS

  • Photo on 8 21 15 at 6 45 AM  2
    Author
    TERC Inc
  • 2015 04 01 Gravel headshot
    Author
    Tufts
  • REVISE logo
    Author
    Tufts
  • REVISE logo
    Author
    South End Technology Center
  • Ada Ren
    Author
    TERC Inc
  • Citation

    Publication Name: TERC Hands On!
    Volume: Spring/Summer 2018

    Funders

    NSF
    Funding Program: Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)
    Award Number: 1422532
    Resource Type: Research Products
    Discipline: Engineering | General STEM | Mathematics | Social science and psychology | Technology
    Audience: Youth/Teen (up to 17) | Educators/Teachers | Museum/ISE Professionals
    Environment Type: Public Programs | Making and Tinkering Programs
    Access and Inclusion: Ethnic/Racial | Black/African American Communities

    If you would like to edit a resource, please email us to submit your request.