Becoming a Maker Teacher: Designing Making Curricula That Promotes Pedagogical Change

Sandra Becker,Michele Jacobsen

doi:10.3389/feduc.2020.00083

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the case of a Canadian teacher and her students who engaged with a researcher in a year-long design-based research study exploring the implementation of curriculum within a makerspace context. Together, the grade six teacher and researcher co-designed, co-enacted, and co-reflected on three curricular making cycles, one related to sky science, another to mathematical transformations, and a third focused on core concepts of democratic systems. The two-fold purpose of this DBR was to promote pedagogical change through designs for making and to articulate design principles that could be utilized when engaging with curriculum for making. Findings show that the makerspace as learning environment and design-based research as methodology provided a double helix scaffold that compelled the teacher to reconsider her frame when enacting curriculum. For this teacher, collaboration on design-based research and designs for learning in the makerspace promoted a shift in pedagogy and led her and her students to rethink notions of curriculum while questioning what is important to know. An expansion of the intervention to engage multiple teachers in multiple sites to determine scalability is recommended. Study findings point to the makerspace as a promising design frame for rethinking curriculum and pedagogical practice.

Highlights

To promote positive change in education for Canada’s youngest citizens, classroom-based teaching practices need to shift from standardized delivery of content to supporting students’ interest driven knowledge building in the highly complex and technology mediated worlds in which we live. Bereiter (2014) argues educational research must go beyond attempts to document “best practice” and move toward promoting “invention” (7) and creating sustainable transformations and innovative practices through creative approaches to designing for learning using design-based research (DBR), conducted collaboratively with real teachers in real classrooms (Brown, 1992)
We focus on the case of a Canadian teacher, Riley, and her students who engaged with a researcher, Sandra, in a year-long DBR study exploring the implementation of innovative curriculum within a makerspace context
We carry out an examination of the enactment of making using van den Akker’s curriculum components, typology, and levels in light of the cyclical curricular work implemented during this year-long design-based research

Summary

Introduction

To promote positive change in education for Canada’s youngest citizens, classroom-based teaching practices need to shift from standardized delivery of content to supporting students’ interest driven knowledge building in the highly complex and technology mediated worlds in which we live. Bereiter (2014) argues educational research must go beyond attempts to document “best practice” and move toward promoting “invention” (7) and creating sustainable transformations and innovative practices through creative approaches to designing for learning using design-based research (DBR), conducted collaboratively with real teachers in real classrooms (Brown, 1992). Current research suggests that the makerspace environment lends itself to formal educational settings in that learners can prototype, construct, and build conceptual ideas through making (Bevan, 2017; Becker, 2019; Becker and Jacobsen, 2019). Participating in making can support the exploration of topics of study in the school curriculum (Harron and Huges, 2018) and perhaps more importantly, provide authentic opportunities for students to risk take, problem solve, and learn from failure (Oxman Ryan et al, 2016; Paganelli et al, 2016; Becker, 2019; Becker and Jacobsen, 2019). Though there is research that supports the overall benefits of making for learning, there is a gap in teacher education and classroom-based research on how curriculum might be enacted in makerspaces (Kjällander et al, 2018)

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion