Teachers as Makers in Chemistry Education: an Exploratory Study

Abstract

The Maker movement has started to influence the field of science education. However, a tension exists between the movement’s informal grassroots learning emphasis on open-ended personalized projects and the requirements of the formal and standardized science education curriculum. This study explores how high school chemistry teachers in Israel experienced a 32-h professional development (PD) course on “Chemistry Teachers as Makers” as a vehicle to suggest specific recommendations that might productively introduce the Maker approach into high school chemistry education. By analyzing the course syllabus, in-depth interviews of four participating teachers, teacher projects, and reflections of the two course instructors, the study explores how the teachers experienced the PD Maker course, i.e., what interested them, how they compared themselves to Makers, how they navigated their open-ended projects, and what they perceived as the pros and cons for introducing Makers into chemistry education. The findings present five overarching themes that emerged from the data analysis, which provide the background to the study’s four interconnected recommendations. The study contributes to the research literature on bridging the gap between the informal learning emphasis of the Maker movement with the formal educational emphasis of high school science, with a focus on the professional development of teachers.