STEM-Rich Maker Learning

In recent years, maker-centered learning has emerged in schools and other spaces as a promising new phase of STEM education reform. With a sharp focus on equity, the authors investigate community-based STEM making programs to determine whether, and how, they can address the educational needs of youth of color. They explore what it means for youth to engage in making with the explicit goal of addressing injustices in their lives. The text features longitudinal ethnographic data and compelling examples that show how youth of color from low-income backgrounds innovate and make usable artifacts to improve their lives and their communities. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the theory and practice of making, STEM learning with adolescents, and equity in both formal and informal educational settings.

Book Features:

• Expands the current making landscape to include urban communities whose resources have not customarily accommodated such an innovative approach.
• Follows youth in two different community-based making spaces to unpack how this type of learning environment supports STEM experiences, and to what end.
• Explores the opportunities and tensions inherent in a community-based making space, such as community centers and youth organizations.

Angela Calabrese Barton is a professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Edna Tan is associate professor in science education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

"In STEM-Rich Maker Learning: Designing for Equity with Youth of Color, Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan provide rich and complex portraits that challenge what we mean by making, makers, and makerspaces. This timely and much-needed publication critically and constructively examines the stories of making and makers that have captured the public imagination."
—From the Foreword by Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania

"This book offers a timely critical framing of STEM-rich making brought to life with vivid portraits of youth engaged in equitable and consequential learning in and across community settings.”
—Beth Warren, Boston University

Table of Contents

Foreword by Yasmin Kafai

Chapter 1. Equity and the Maker Movement
   The Promise of the Maker Movement
   Building a Framework for Equitable and Consequential Maker Learning
   Light-Up Scooter
   Learning with Youth: The Chapters in This Book

Chapter 2. Working Towards an Equitable and Consequential Culture of Youth-Based Maker Learning
   Feeling Accomplished
   Considering Equitable and Consequential Maker Learning:  Mobilities of Criticality
   How We Use a Mobilities of Criticality Framework
   Mobilities of Criticality: Why We Focus Our Work in Community Partnerships
   Looking Ahead

Chapter 3. "We Wanna Makerspace!": Youth Participatory Action Research Towards the Design of Equity-Oriented Making
   Design of Making Environments
   Youth Participatory Action Research
   The Unfolding of an Investigation
   Critical Moments
   Discussion
   Looking Ahead: Challenging the Boundaries of Making and Makerspaces 

Chapter 4. Youth as Community Ethnographers
   Youth as Community Ethnographers
   Community Ethnography as Pedagogy in Making
   Community Ethnography Toward New Practices and Spaces of Making
   Community Dialogues and Observations Toward Refining the Problem Space
   Community Ethnography for Equitable and Consequential Making

Chapter 5. Co-Making: Imagining New Social Futures Through Community Making
   Supporting a Culture of Co-Making
   Co-Making Toward New Relationalities in Making
   Negotiating Tensions Inherent in Relationality and Co-Making
   Looking Ahead

Chapter 6. Making for a More Just World
   Stories of Youth Makers
   Rooted in Community
   Making for Place and Place-Making
   Looking Ahead

Chapter 7. Seeding an Authentic Community Making Culture
   Organizing for Material Re-Imaginings and New Social Futures
   Expanding Maker-Roles, Expanding Agency
   Looking Ahead

Chapter 8. Making and the Equity Agenda: Looking Forward
   Equitable and Consequential STEM-Rich Making and Maker Learning
   Co-Creating an Emergent, Community-Focused Youth Making Culture with Youth Makers

References

Index

About the Authors