STEM Learning While Making: All Lives Can’t Matter Until Black Lives Matter

July 1st, 2018 | RESEARCH

This is a story about learning STEM content and practices while making objects. It is also a story about how that learning is contextualized in one young man’s disruption of racism simply by trying to learn how gears work. Our project, Investigating STEM Literacies in MakerSpaces (STEMLiMS), focuses on how adults and youth use representations to accomplish tasks in STEM disciplines in formal and informal making spaces (Tucker-Raymond, Gravel, Kohberger, & Browne, 2017). Making is an interdisciplinary endeavor that may involve mechanical and electrical engineering, digital literacies and programming, mathematics and any number of science disciplines depending on the topic of what one is making. At the same time, makers pay attention to aesthetics—the look, feel, and artistic dimensions of their projects—and to the messages or ideas they want to express. Messages in making are important, because they reflect what makers experience and care about.

Document

STEM_Learning_While_Making_All_Lives_Can-1.pdf

Team Members

Eli Tucker-Raymond, Author, TERC Inc
Brian Gravel, Author, Tufts
Aditi Wagh, Author, Tufts
Susan Klimczak, Author, South End Technology Center
Ada Ren, Author, TERC Inc

Citation

Publication: TERC Hands On!
Volume: Spring/Summer 2018

Funders

Funding Source: NSF
Funding Program: Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)
Award Number: 1422532

Related URLs

Investigating STEM Literacies in Maker Spaces

Tags

Access and Inclusion: Black | African American Communities | Ethnic | Racial
Audience: Educators | Teachers | Museum | ISE Professionals | Youth | Teen (up to 17)
Discipline: Engineering | General STEM | Mathematics | Social science and psychology | Technology
Resource Type: Research Case Study | Research Products
Environment Type: Making and Tinkering Programs | Public Programs