Written by: Peter Wardrip, Jeffrey Evancho & Sandra Taylor-Marshall, UW-Madison
Over the past decade or so, Makerspaces have emerged as innovative educational spaces at the intersection of disciplines and technologies. These spaces (and they are not always spaces—they can be programs, carts, closets, etc.) value hands-on learning, learner agency and producing something—even if the process is more important than the product. While the adoption across the country has not been even over this past decade, today, it is not unusual to find a makerspace at a school, library, museum or community center near you.
The educators working in these spaces hold special value. Research has already shown the importance of the facilitation of learning in these spaces (staff over stuff). While the maker educators in these spaces design or adapt creative learning experiences for learners, they also may hold the key to innovative instructional practice in their schools, organizations and communities. We see maker educators as potential leaders in our communities.
Over the last ten years, we have worked with maker educators to develop a leadership practice. For these maker educators, being a leader is not about being the boss. Maker educator leaders aim to improve not only their own educational practice, but also the practice of others. They have an influence that goes beyond their classroom or learning setting. This leadership is about mobilizing and energizing other educators based on their expertise, experience and willingness to work with others to improve practice. In building this capacity, a productive starting point is to identify what they value for learning and engagement.
Identify what they value for learning and engagement
Schools and other educational spaces develop makerspaces and maker programs for a variety of purposes. For example, they might see makerspaces as an opportunity to intentionally support cross-curricular connections or interdisciplinary learning. Building and using circuit blocks can create learning opportunities for engineering design, geometry, circuitry, etc. Moreover, educators might see makerspaces as a chance to create opportunities to develop 21st century skills and dispositions. Building and testing a Rube Goldberg machine might encourage students to collaborate, problem solve and persist in the face of difficulties. And there are a whole host of other specific and valid aims and goals that educators might have for their makerspaces.
Unfortunately, many makerspaces are not developed with this level of intentionality. And the goals and purposes of a makerspace can evolve over time. Because of this, maker educator leaders can engage colleagues in this process of values identification. We call this the big rock activity. Inspired by the work of Stephen Covey, it follows the analogy of filling up a jar with rocks. If we start with our big rocks, we can add the smaller rocks in the gaps. If we start with the small rocks, we cannot fit the big rocks.
The big rocks constitute what we value for learning and engagement. Identifying what we value is not a one-off activity. Rather, identifying our value is the start of a long-term process of clarifying what is important for our maker-based learning experiences, what it looks like for our learners to engage in our value and how we design for our value. And the process of identifying our value creates the conditions for colleagues to develop a common language of learning; one that enables a team to talk specifically about our ambitions for maker-based learning.
Identifying our values is part of our Maker Educator Leadership Certificate through the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As part of a cohort, maker educators work together virtually over the course of the year to identify and refine their value, test out tools to share practice and engage in small experiments where they apply what is learned in the cohort in their own setting. Through participation in the cohort, maker educator leaders can expand and/or deepen the ways in which they support a culture of learning among their colleagues and contribute to innovations in their school or organization.
Learn more about the Maker Educator Leadership Certificate.
About the Authors:
Peter Wardrip is an Associate Professor of STEAM Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on informal/formal learning collaborations, professional learning for educators, formative assessment and making as a learning process.
Jeff Evancho is the Director of Partnerships and Equity at Northgate School District as well as an active leader within the Remake Learning Network. Jeff co-directs a learning community known as Agency by Design Pittsburgh, designed to connect educators from diverse maker-based learning environments for the purpose of developing mutual understandings of maker-centered learning and assessment. Jeff earned his EdD in Administrative and Policy Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. In recent years Jeff has worked with other champions of school reform to offer equitable and relevant professional development to regional educators. Jeff designs and facilitates educator professional development that supports ideas like educational agency, equity, relevance, global competencies, and more.
Sandra Taylor-Marshall is an Outreach Program Manager at PLACE who develops and facilitates programs with UW-Madison faculty that exemplify the Wisconsin Idea in action. For example, she designed the Coalition for Leading Anti-Racist Schools with Dr. Anjalé Welton, which utilizes job-embedded coaching to support educators and organizational leaders engaging in an anti-racist cycle of inquiry. A passionate leader and coach, Sandra strives to create high quality, engaging experiences that utilize job-embedded coaching, advance equity, and integrate authentic opportunities to put research into practice. A former PK-5 literacy coordinator, instructional coach, classroom teacher, and interventionist, Sandra earned her Master of Science degree in Education with an emphasis on reading. She received her reading specialist license from Concordia University Wisconsin.