Identifying and defining the activities that are maker education: An international view
David J. Ellis · 2018
The article reveals that the activities of maker education are not new, but merely an enthusiastic push that has been encouraged by the access and availability of new technologies. Identified activities and terms used to define ‘maker education’ were also represented within more established and nuanced labels of education such as technology education, Design and Technology Education and STEM education to name a few. These connections have established that there is a distinction to be drawn between maker education and other maker movement labels such as ‘tinkering’, and ‘hacking’ in that maker education is ‘in-school’ and considered to be formally embedded into the school curriculum, as opposite to an out-of-school hobby (Hsu, Baldwin, & Ching, 2017). In developing an understanding of ‘maker education’, rather than the ‘maker movement’, maker education activities involved an ecological interaction between students and teachers and relevant stakeholders. The benefits of this interaction have been described to contribute to an overall transformative process. The result is not just the realisation of the ‘made’ artefact, where what has been transformed from the “mind’s eye” (McLaren, Stables, & Bain, 2006)becomes a tangible object, but the transformation of the learner. It is not just the development of ‘relevant’ skills and knowledge viewed from a traditional technical knowledge, vocational foci that are acquired during the making process, but a more holistic transformation.