Making as a Learning Process: Identifying and Supporting Family Learning in Informal Settings
Lisa Brahms · D-Scholarship@Pitt (University of Pittsburgh) · 2014
Making is characterized by engagement in creative production at the crossroads and fringes of disciplines such as science, technology, engineering, art, and math, and has developed into a recognized social, technological and economic movement. As a creative activity at the intersection of the physical and digital, making integrates current trends in do-it-yourself culture, traditional craft, and emerging technologies, such as physical computing and fabrication. Making is currently being positioned as directly tied to children’s participation in science, technology, engineering and math, and to their orientation towards related workforce pathways. There is a growing demand from educators and policymakers for definitions, measures, and guidelines of design that capture the qualities of making as a learning process. The articles that comprise this dissertation respond to this demand, mapping the practices and perspectives of the maker community to foundational theories of the learning sciences. Theoretically, the work is based in the communities of practice framework. In adopting this approach, I am able to distinguish what making is as a learning process, through the identification of the core learning practices of the making community, and to explore how such learning can be evidenced in the context of a designed informal learning environment. First, I present a textual analysis of Make Magazine, the most popular textual source of maker community participation, wherein I identify seven core learning practices of the maker community, as well as notable attributes of featured makers, such as gender and disciplinary affiliation. Second, I extend this analysis to family participation in the designed informal learning environment of a children's museum, where I locate and trace evidence of learning through two case studies of young children’s contextualized participation in a family maker space. Findings show how young children meaningfully participate in making as a learning process by coordinating contextual resources to participate with intent and sophistication in maker community practices. I discuss key factors that influence children’s participation in making as a learning process, as well as implications for leveraging making as a learning process for all.