Abstract:

This presentation describes an investigation of the prospects for incorporating maker-centered learning into early childhood education. Maker-centered learning (MCL) is a pedagogical approach centered on the process of making to foster individual and collective agency and empower young people to shape their worlds (Clapp, Ross, Ryan, & Tishman, 2017). Existing early childhood initiatives and resources demonstrate that MCL is not only appropriate for but elemental to learning in early childhood settings. Through making, young children can develop a sensitivity to the design of their environments and become empowered to re-design, innovate, or improve the world around them (e.g., Blank & Lynch, 2018; Daley & Beloglovsky, 2015; Doorley, 2014). Although past research has demonstrated the value of maker-centered learning across grade levels, early childhood educators have expressed challenges in incorporating this approach to teaching and learning into their work with young children (Clapp et al., 2017). Understanding how teachers interpret maker-centered learning and how they make age-appropriate adaptations for their students is essential to the success of this pedagogical approach. The present study builds off of the Agency by Design framework for maker-centered learning by sharing the insights and strategies that twelve kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong shared as they applied this framework to empower their students through making. This study employed a collaborative inquiry approach (DeLuca, Shulha, Luhanga, Shulha, Christou, & Klinger, 2014) grounded in the principles of design-based research (Design Based Research Collective, 2003) wherein the expertise of researchers and practitioners were combined to develop dynamic interventions that result in “usable knowledge” (Lagemann, 2002). Teachers developed and tested MCL interventions in their classrooms and recorded them using a structured tool called an inquiry cycle (Ross & Clapp, 2018), in which teachers provided documentation and reflected upon the opportunities and challenges they faced. In addition, teachers participated in focus groups, interviews, and exhibitions of their work throughout the study. Data from this study were coded using an emic approach to identify emergent themes that characterized teachers’ insights and strategies. Results revealed that teachers incorporated age-appropriate strategies and materials, such as role-playing, storybooks, and visual supports, to adapt maker-centered learning to their contexts. Teachers observed that MCL is a natural fit for young learners and fosters systems thinking, perspective-taking, empathy, and collaborative learning. Specifically, teachers found that looking closely at systems through collaborative MCL experiences, supports young learners in considering the perspectives of the people engaged in a given system and recognizing that systems are malleable and may be reimagined to function more effectively. Furthermore, incorporating maker-centered learning changed teachers’ perspectives on their own practice, prompting them to take a more student-centered approach to teaching and learning that gave children more agency and independence. This presentation will unpack teacher insights about maker-centered learning as an innovative approach in early childhood education, provide examples of the strategies teachers employed, and offer suggestions for how MCL can contribute to pedagogical innovations in other early childhood settings.

Keywords:

Early childhood education, maker-centered learning, qualitative methods, collaborative inquiry, pedagogical innovations.