Theoretical Foundation

[ WHAT IS MAKER EDUCATION? ]

To begin with...

On hearing the phrase Maker Education, you will probably have a mental image in your mind. It is possible, for instance, that you will start thinking of children and teenagers tinkering with 3D printers, laser cutters, sophisticated technologies, and lessons in robotics.

You might not have imagined such an elaborate picture, but you may have thought of children playing with various kits full of maker items that will stimulate creativity and an innovative spirit. Or maybe you have imagined students playing and creating with scrap metal and recyclable materials, or even children in kindergarten making playdough for the first time!

All these images, so distinct from each other, suggest that Maker Education may be as broad a concept as the number of educators that use this approach. Therefore, we believe that it is important to clarify the meaning of Maker Education and why we believe that the work developed in this project can be classified in this way.

Images: Thomas Maker

First of all, it is important to point out that being a maker is not a title that a person is conferred when they join some kind of club or society. In his book "Maker-Centered Learning, empowering young children to shape their worlds²", Edward Clapp points out that when we understand that being a maker involves the mere act of creating things, we realize that “the maker community can be seen as being more inclusive, aggregating and welcoming to all those who create”. This makes all the difference in our work since it means acknowledging that young, and very young, children can actually be makers!

[2] CLAPP, E. P.; ROSS, J.; RYAN, J. O.; TISHMAN, S. Maker-centered learning: Empowering young people to shape their worlds. San Francisco, John Wiley & Sons, 2016. 256 p.

Images: Thomas Maker

Alright! We must admit that this is a very broad definition and that though it may mean a lot, it may at the same time mean nothing. After all, if all those who create are makers, what is the point in being identified as such?

After all, if all those who create are makers, what is the point in being identified as such? In the face of this question, it is necessary to point out the importance of the maker movement in the construction of a certain cultural identity around this term. Thus, Clapp suggests that there is something unique about the types of activities and culture in which the maker community engages.

“How can the maker movement and the maker culture be classified as more inclusive while we admit that the work that is being done in makerspaces and maker-centered classrooms has a distinct social ethos?”

In 2015, the Thomas Maker team was faced with this question, and thereafter they developed what became known as the “Maker Intelligence Equalizer”. We devised a tool that helps to systematize the self-evaluation of maker experiments based on the results of the research conducted by Harvard’s Project Zero (PZ). The equalizer uses as its parameters the three groups of characteristics (constellations) of the maker approach which became clear throughout the research: community, learning processes and spaces.

It must be pointed out that the aim here is not for us to exert control over what is and what is not Maker Education, but to detect signs that may indicate which aspects of the maker-centered approach are being put into practice. With that in mind, we hope that the equalizer will be an effective starting point to understand what we mean by Maker Education. The equalizer app is available both on Android and on iOS [bilingual versions].

Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize that the material we developed for Aperte o PLAY is intended for children in Early Childhood Education, whose experiences display very particular characteristics. Some teachers may even argue: “But couldn’t the classrooms in Early Childhood Education already be considered maker?” In his book "Lifelong Kindergarten4", Mitchel Resnick suggests that although many kindergartens around the world adopt practices similar to those described above, there still is a worrying tendency towards mechanical knowledge transfer. Actually, Resnick is a prominent author when it comes to learning by playing (and to increase your repertoire in the subject, we will present his bio and some other references below). Having noticed that kindergarten is becoming more and more like the rest of the school, he suggests that the opposite movement be made: that the rest of the school be more and more similar to kindergarten.

The project Aperte o PLAY aims at making this very move by means of integrating Maker Education, Visible Learning, Playful Learning, elastic readings and Social-Emotional Education applied to Early Childhood Education. In this sense, what we seek to develop with the proposed activities is the construction of competencies in the use of certain tools, materials and processes, the consolidation of a maker identity and the acquisition of a variety of mindsets through thinking routines. All this should be done in a fun, playful manner, connected with literature and thorough investigation. We hope that by now it has been clear what we mean by Maker Education. In the section below, we intend to bring a brief conceptualization of some of the guiding principles mentioned above, which were fundamental for the development of an approach focused on Early Childhood Education. Shall we go a little deeper into these concepts?

There are three wide areas that characterize the cultural ethos of Maker Education: communities, processes and spaces. The main objective, namely to promote Maker Empowerment, can be achieved through the practice of the Three Maker Capacities: looking closely, exploring complexity and finding opportunity.

In the hope that you are not too confused at this point, let me briefly mention what the Visible Learning theme means. In a nutshell, Visible Learning is a set of practices that permeates an educational movement which can be linked to three major lines of research. In this e-book, we will discuss two of them, which were the source of inspiration for our work:

[4] RESNICK, Mitchel. Lifelong Kindergarten: cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers, and play. Boston, MIT Press, 2017. 158 p.