The emergence of leadership in students\u2019 group interaction in a school-based makerspace

Jasmiina Leskinen,Anu Kajamaa,Antti Rajala,Kristiina Kumpulainen

doi:10.1007/s10212-020-00509-x

Jasmiina Leskinen, Anu Kajamaa + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-020-00509-x

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Abstract

This case study is an examination of the emergence of leadership in students’ group interaction in a school-based makerspace. The data comprised video records of 20 primary school students’ group work within this context, encompassing student-driven creative engagement in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) learning activities. Interaction analysis was applied to analyze the students’ leadership moves and to depict how students’ leadership was related to their collaboration. The analysis resulted in a typology of students’ leadership moves in a makerspace context, namely, coordination of joint work, exploring new ideas, seeking out resources,and offering guidance and supporting others, adding to the existing literature on student leadership and collaboration in novel learning environments. The study also illustrates how the students’ leadership moves in group interactions can lead to dominating and/or shared leadership, with consequences for students’ collaboration. The study points to the importance of more research and development of pedagogical practices that support students’ symmetric participation and opportunities to lead collaborative work and to promote advanced collaboration in school-based makerspaces.

Highlights

Due to changes in society and the learning requirements these pose, there is an increased interest in education to develop participatory student-centered learning environments which are interest-driven and foster students’ creative and personal ways of engaging in various STEAM design and making activities (e.g., Kumpulainen et al 2019a; Dougherty 2016; Martin & Dixon 2016; Peppler et al 2016)
The results show how engaging in the makerspace was very much about the students coordinating their joint work (42.4% of detected leadership moves, see Table 1)
Our results show that coordinating joint work was the most common leadership move

Summary

Introduction

Due to changes in society and the learning requirements these pose, there is an increased interest in education to develop participatory student-centered learning environments which are interest-driven and foster students’ creative and personal ways of engaging in various STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) design and making activities (e.g., Kumpulainen et al 2019a; Dougherty 2016; Martin & Dixon 2016; Peppler et al 2016). In creative tasks students need to coordinate their work, make joint decisions to construct and modify solutions, and support each other’s work through dialog and action (Hennessy and Murphy 1999; Howe and Zachariou 2019)

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