From the Teachers’ Perspective: Negotiating the Collaborative Nature of Maker Education in a K-12 Setting (original) (raw)

This qualitative study examined the thinking and practices of three New Jersey teachers facilitating maker education with 4th-8th grade students in three different school environments. Interviews and observations uncovered how each teacher interacted with the school context. Collaboration is a Maker Movement practice valued by educators, but the extent to which K-12 maker educators can formally engage and encourage collaboration is somewhat dependent on the culture and structural attributes of their schools. However, due to a relative lack of administrative supervision of maker education compared with standardized-tested subjects, maker teachers in this study envisioned their classes as sanctuaries for students, or informal settings where students could develop communicative and collaborative skills by socializing about their work. Keywords: Maker Education, Maker Movement, makerspaces, collaboration; maker teachers, maker educators, informal learning, design thinking, Partnership Operation Model, STEM

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