Thanks so much for your comments and questions. The report (link below) does give one fairly detailed example of how Making projects support STEM practices, and then references many different kinds of examples. The students in the programs we studied were pretty much equally boys and girls (except in one all-girls program) with a high representation (~80%) coming from low income families. You ask great questions, but not sure they can be answered quickly in this venue! Perhaps a key point to share is that we have found that Making can offer opportunities where students can really take ownership of the problems they are working on. They are driven to become fluent with STEM concepts and practices in order to succeed in what they themselves want to do. Another interesting point is that their aesthetic concerns (what something looks/sounds like) or social goals (how something will be used) often creates new constraints and therefore deeper levels of problem solving (and related patience and persistence) than might otherwise be the case. Please take a look at our report and we’d be thrilled to talk more about it.

http://researchandpractice.org/resource/stem-ma...

Great to have this report. Thanks.

We haven’t done that analysis per se. Two of the programs we studied had mixed age groups, and in those cases we found that older students, when they were also more experienced with the tools and space, took on more complicated projects (or made simple projects more complicated). They also sometimes took on the role of assisting younger or less experienced students. In short, we haven’t found that age is a limitation in and of itself, but experience with concepts and tools is.

In sum, Making provides opportunities for more experienced (often older) youth to serve as coaches, deepening their sense of belonging; and, of course, learning through teaching.

The open-ended nature of productive Making activities (identified by us and others as “the potential for complexification”), where the learner can always make an activity more challenging or complicated, adding additional electronic components, scaling up, or creating more complex behaviors, means that learners can operate at and push beyond their edge of understanding.

At the Exploratorium, we have seen people of all ages and all backgrounds/training engage in many of these activities.

Hi Steve,
We used the word ambitious because the girls in the Techbridge program, for example, were supported to pursue truly open-ended projects for which there was no blueprint. The program doesn’t start that way — there are plenty of experiences that are less open-ended where the students can master the use of specific tools or concepts (e.g., circuitry, soldering, etc.). But, as they progress, the projects become more individualized and less structured. So I think the main criteria is that the projects are truly the creation of the girls’ imaginations, and they need to figure out how to achieve their vision, from a to z, with the support of the program educators who assist rather than lead. Examples of ambitious projects in the report include a self-zipping jacket (which zips up or down based on weather temps) or an immersive sound exhibit.

On process versus product, we have found that it’s critical that the staff are truly prepared to understand that balance and to create a program culture that can support it for students. Perhaps my colleague Jean Ryoo can share some of her observations about how that kind of culture was built at the programs she observed. Bronwyn

Hi Steve,
Thanks so much for your questions!
To build on what Bronwyn shared, many of the Maker Faire projects that Techbridge girls created were recognized by all of us in the partnership (educators and researchers alike) as ambitious. This was not only because they were rooted in girls’ original designs, but also because the girls often took on challenges that even the adults in the room could not immediately solve. This resulted in a really wonderful community of learners in which youth could see the adults as collaborators or supporters in problem solving processes, not just as older experts who would answer all their question or problems. Girls leaned a lot on their peers as well as adults to solve the challenges their designs surfaced.
In relation to supporting process over product, we saw this a lot in the culture of Techbridge. We wrote a blog and a Fablearn paper about this topic, reflecting on the ways that both educators and youth could reframe current notions of “failure” (a word that is not necessarily used in the program, by the way!) when focusing on the iterative design processes. You can find the blog here: http://corwin-connect.com/2015/04/the-other-f-w.... You can also find our Fablearn paper here: https://www.exploratorium.edu/sites/default/fil....
What this looked like in the program were girls feeling proud to share non-working prototypes of unfinished projects at Maker Faire or a willingness to discuss with their peers and educators how projects may not always look like one’s original designs.
Our Network’s educators and researchers also collaborated to create a professional development resource about this topic which we hope can be useful to other programs in the field. This resource identifies the value of supporting iterations and drafts as part of the scientific practices of Tinkering and Making, offers descriptions of the idea from research literature, shows examples of students’ iterative processes in various afterschool programs, and then provides professional development activities that can be done with teachers to support their understanding and experiences teaching with iterations and drafts in mind. You can find that resource here: http://researchandpractice.org/resource/iterati....
Let us know what you think of these resources. We would love to hear your feedback!

Yes I completely agree with you. And I think our title was meant as a provocation to elicit exactly these kinds of points.
But also: There are real questions, coming mostly through a more instrumental lens on learning, about “what is being learned?” Educators want and need to articulate the powerful learning and development that Making can support, as well as how it connects to mandated curricula. I see potential in this tension for broadening, and developing an evidence base for, common cultural models of “what learning looks like.”

I totally agree. When I came to the NY Hall of Science from a fairly traditional natural history museum, I had quite a learning curve around how exhibits work here and what are goals and expectations were. Making was really hard for me because I couldn’t understand how to assess what was being learned. I think the posed questions are great and the tie ins to STEM.

Thanks Barbara. We have just started a follow up study that looks at how learning that occurs in an afterschool Tinkering program flows into, and can be recognized and leveraged during the school day. Bronwyn

No, we haven’t yet, although our colleagues at the Exploratorium Tinkering Studio lead PD workshops (including a Coursera MOOC) designed for classroom teachers who are integrating tinkering into the school day.

Yes, and they also come to see themselves as creative thinkers and good problem-solvers.

Thanks for raising this important point. One of the key features of afterschool is that it is a “low-stakes” setting where young people can stretch themselves, to learn and try new things. Hand-in-hand with trying new things, or taking intellectual or creative risks, is the reality that sometimes things don’t work as you expected — because your expectations aren’t quite right, because you are still learning. As you know, there’s no expert out there that got to expertise without learning from moments when their understanding was challenged.

STEM is so often presented as “facts to be memorized” and when it is presented as “STEM practices” during the school-day, there often isn’t the time for students to be wrong (without high stakes consequences). There’s reason to believe that these conditions may discourage young people, who haven’t grown up identifying with STEM, to dive in and learn by doing.

As an engineer, you (like the NRC K12 Framework) probably call what we are talking about “the iterative design process” — as things don’t work, you revise and rework based on data and feedback. In our network, we have emphasized “the process” in the iterative design process because we see such powerful learning and development happening during the process of making, and we don’t want it to be shortchanged. Particularly for educators without formal STEM backgrounds, there is a danger that getting the product “right” and “done” can take precedence over allowing youth to struggle through their questions and come to their own (and therefore owned) understanding. Or in the context of Making, that educators might adopt a step-by-step building approach in which nothing really can go wrong. Everybody gets the same thing right and done at the same time; and so learning is somewhat limited. (We think by the way that there is a place for such step-by-step activities, but as stepping stones for more ambitious, creative, and open-ended work.) This emphasis sets the stage for helping educators understand how they can assist students to be successful without limiting or taking over their ambitions or projects.

We have two examples where students were still exploring phenomena related to their very complex (ambitious) product, when “time ran out” before the Maker Faire. Rather than not coming to the Maker Faire, or being assigned as helpers to others who had finished their projects, the girls were positioned front and center to share their working prototypes and discuss their plans, process, and how they had responded to the data/feedback they were collecting along the way (and what their next steps would be when they returned to work on them some more).

I hope that helps. The phrase “process over product” is most definitely not about lax standards. It’s really about honoring learning, supporting the development of youth resilience through productive struggle, and spotlighting the special role that Making in afterschool can play towards developing young people’s STEM interests, understanding and commitments.

My colleagues Linda Kekelis and Jean Ryoo wrote a blog about this here: http://corwin-connect.com/2015/04/the-other-f-w...
Our Collaboratory colleagues in Seattle produced this Practice Brief on “Failing Forward” http://stemteachingtools.org/brief/36

Thank you Bronwyn Bevan for your response and for the links which give some related context. I am uncomfortable with terms like “failing forward” etc as I am with “process over product”. These phrases introduce the necessity for explanations which could be avoided entirely with different choices of explication of the efforts to engage the broadest cross section of learners in ways that excite their creativity and do not extinguish their interests. I repeat my first statement earlier that I love the program’s approach, just have some reservations about some of these statements. I want to note something that may be obvious which is that most engineering design efforts are addressing how to improve devices that already meet many functions. A relatively small fraction of the population of engineers actually spend their time “inventing” new devices. Exploration of “why” and “how” for existing devices as well as “making” new devices might be useful elements of these programs.

Thanks so much for your comments. Yes, we are passionate about addressing issues of equity related to Making and I am glad to know you are too! I agree that the Maker Movement offers amazing possibilities for youth to harness their creativity and curiosity toward new learning experiences. More specifically, I love how Making is rooted in ancient human and cultural practices and can potentially celebrate the perspectives, experiences, ways of knowing, and diverse skills that children bring to the table. On the flip side, as you note, there are challenges to equity-oriented Making when it becomes a privilege that only the wealthiest schools and programs can have. Furthermore, even when a Maker Space is created with the goal of inviting youth from low-income communities or more diverse perspectives into the space, there are many youth and community members who may feel like they don’t belong or cannot belong because they don’t see themselves as “Makers” in the ways that Making has been branded by the larger movement. I think it is our responsibility to highlight the creativity, problem solving, various ways of understanding the world, etc. that allow all people to be “Makers” in their own ways, and to provide the opportunities to have all people experience their own ways of knowing and being as assets and not deficits to STEM-rich Making and Tinkering. Programs like Techbridge, Community Science Workshop, and the Exploratorium’s Tinkering programs with the San Francisco Boys and Girls Club and Lighthouse Community Charter School are trying to make that happen so that (as you note) Making is not a privilege relegated to youth in only the wealthiest schools. Thanks!

Hi, Vivian,

Great questions! At Techbridge, we approach mentorship in a few different ways. Teams of girls in our high school Making programs work with mentors who support them as they work on their long term projects. These mentors may be students from local colleges and universities pursuing STEM degrees, or they may be STEM professionals.

In addition, students are able to take on roles as mentors in a couple of different ways: As they work on their projects, over time girls naturally develop expertise in skills and content as they learn what they need to do to achieve their visions (for example, one group of girls may become expert in programming Arduinos to control LEDs, or in creating circuits with servos). Frequently, other teams will be working similar problems, but may be further along in the process, or just starting out, since their work is self-directed. Techbridge facilitators encourage girls who are experts in a topic to support other teams that need to develop similar skills; girls will also naturally take on this role themselves.

We are also working on more formal ways to develop youth mentoring and leadership; for example, this summer a group of high school girls will take on mentor roles during our Summer Academy for middle school girls, supporting them as they engage in robotics activities. We are also planning in our high school Maker programs to recruit a cohort of experienced girls to act as leaders next school year, supporting new students who join the program.

In terms of project selection and team design, girls work in groups of two to four, and at the beginning of their Maker project work, they present the ideas that they are interested in pursuing to the whole group. Girls then self-select into teams based on mutual interest and remain in those teams for several months developing their projects.

As to the timing of facilitator intervention if girls are struggling, it’s a delicate balance, and is very informed by facilitators’ knowledge of and relationships with the girls in question. In general, we try to give girls time to work on problems themselves, because they often can and will figure out the solutions themselves (and we don’t want to short-circuit that process); we also want to give them some experience with working through frustration and develop perseverance. However, if girls are struggling with a problem that they may not have enough information to solve on their own (and aren’t able to find themselves), if they seem like they may be so frustrated that they are shutting down, or if they ask for help, facilitators will step in, not to offer them a “right answer”, but (as you suggest) to ask questions, suggest different pathways, or share new information. We also always acknowledge that we are co-learners and may not ourselves have all of the solutions, and will often work with girls to learn something together.

Really appreciate the way the program is approaching mentoring and “guiding.” Good to hear from you!

It would be great to get some of the participants to talk about their experience with iteration, risk taking, challenges, and what it means to them over the course of the effort. Are there plans to capture some “in your own words” stories from the participants as they move through the Making?

This is a great idea, Vivian! We have been trying to capture some of these stories from a youth perspective and hope to share them with you all soon. In the meantime, you can check out a short paper that we presented at Fablearn last year that includes some quotes from the girls describing the ways they understood iteration, working through challenges, and tinkering. You can download that paper here: https://www.exploratorium.edu/sites/default/fil.... Would love to know what you think! Thanks for your posts!

Hi Teri. I agree with your comment about technologies. I think that is at the heart of why Making, as in the maker movement, has become such a phenomenon. Affordable, small techno tools — and also some push-back on the last 2 decades of narrow conceptions of what teaching and learning look like. B.

Hi Leslie! Thanks so much for taking the time to watch our video and post to the discussion.
To answer your questions:
Currently our Network is in a quieter phase due to changes in personnel and funding. However, several of us across the Network are still meeting regularly to continue creating professional development resources and write blogs or articles together (which I will describe in greater detail below). Anyway, during the research phase (over approximately 2 years), we met as an entire group on a conference call once a month to discuss ideas, project data, readings, happenings/events occurring in each partner location, etc. These monthly calls served as a way to maintain a shared vision for the project and answer questions about our goals and work as they came up.
Alongside the monthly meetings, individual researchers on the team who were conducting ethnographic observations at the different program sites (Molly Shea, Nicole Bulalacao, and I) also met regularly with educators and program leaders. In this way, beyond the face-to-face time we spent during program visits (with researchers observing afterschool and professional development activities), we would also meet to look at and analyze data together (video footage, fieldnotes, etc.). In some cases (such as at the Environmental Science Workshop in Watsonville), this joint analysis of data served as a simultaneous professional development for the afterschool educators. And in other cases, such as at Techbridge, the experience became extra “meta” in regards to weaving together research and practice and meeting online and in-person to discuss ideas: Last summer, Techbridge staff and I took the Tinkering Fundamentals Coursera together (taught by Karen Wilkinson, Mike Petrich, and Luigi Anzivino of the Exploratorium Tinkering Studio). We all took the online course individually, then met in-person to Make/Tinker and discuss the activities (while Techbridge staff from Seattle and DC joined virtually), then shared ideas on a Google doc online, and all the while I also wrote fieldnotes and collected videos/photos to document our experience together.
Regarding tools for activity documentation, we’re always looking for new and interesting ways to document beyond our current video and fieldnote-based ethnographic methods. So if you have any cool tools to share for activity documentation, please do.
For activity facilitation, our Network has developed some professional development resources that we hope are useful for informal Making educators. You can find the resources at: http://www.exploratorium.edu/education/californ.... Some are short briefs of research articles with guiding questions that can be used to support discussions in professional developments with educators around things such as equity, Tinkering/Making, and research-practice partnerships. Another type of resource we have (currently available at: http://researchandpractice.org/resource/iterati...) is a professional development guide for thinking about “iterations and drafts” in Making and Tinkering. Would love to know what you think if you have a chance to check these resources out! Thanks!

Jean – I have been using Sound Cloud – a freeware recording platform in the cloud – to collect weekly audio diary entries.

check it out: https://soundcloud.com/

It will depend on the context, but three strategies that we have seen a lot are (1) intentionally seeding the physical environment with similar or related projects completed by others (students, facilitators, or guest makers) — this includes displaying unfinished work; (2) leading short group discussions and/or demos about the day’s project, where students share prior related experiences, questions, or thoughts about the phenomena or tools; and (3) having facilitators working on their own projects side-by-side with the students. The Exploratorium Tinkering Studio has a large monitor that runs a video loop of work by artists and others that take the core phenomena being investigated that day to a whole new level of creativity or whimsy. These larger-scale or elaborated models can inspire out-of-the-box thinking.