Abstract
In this article, we examine the dynamic, active role of materiality in collaborative maker-centered learning and propose a systematic way of analyzing it. Learning by making involves students in externalizing their ideas through conceptual, visual, and material artifacts. The collaborative process requires students to manage the design task and organize their work processes simultaneously. With a secondary school, we conducted a co-invention project, in which small teams of 13- to 14-year-old students created smart products. Taking a case study perspective, we focused on a team of three students wherein participation was unevenly distributed. We analyzed video recordings from the team’s ten design sessions at three levels: macro, intermediate, and micro. The analysis method we developed revealed that the co-invention project offered diverse, sociomaterially entangled opportunities for collaboration. While the making task enabled embodied contribution, the physical properties of the tools and materials also limited these opportunities. Neither social nor material aspects alone determined participation within the team.
Highlights
Many educational researchers [1,2] have emphasized that to make school learning more inspiring, elements of maker culture [3,4] should be based in schools
Maker-centered learning provides a critical means for promoting innovative design processes and collaboration in schools [5,6,7], along with various options for children to craft, build, and tinker
During the last three sessions, all three team members participated in making the physical prototype
Summary
Many educational researchers [1,2] have emphasized that to make school learning more inspiring, elements of maker culture [3,4] should be based in schools. Maker-centered learning provides a critical means for promoting innovative design processes and collaboration in schools [5,6,7], along with various options for children to craft, build, and tinker. Participation in collaborative maker projects fosters students’ personal and social learning engagement [8]. It elicits skills in solving non-routine problems and productively engaging in design and making practices [7]. In maker-centered learning, designing and making require multiple iterative cycles of constructing, evaluating, and revising models and prototypes of the co-inventions, along with discussing issues that arise while solving design challenges [9]. The focused, creative pursuit of ideas requires students to work toward a joint object, to listen, to understand, and to help each other during the process, and to engage in shared efforts of testing and constructing artifacts [10]
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