Pirita Seitamaa-hakkarainen

• Ph.D
• Professor at University of Helsinki

Educational makerspaces have now been established in many Norwegian schools. Makerspace initiators promote active learning by using new and traditional materials, tools and technologies in creative activities. Arts and crafts (A&C) education shares many ideas with makerspaces, inviting pupils to explorative interaction through material engagement t...

Background Implementing maker education in schools is on the rise, fuelled by its potential to move formal education towards a creative, technology‐driven 21st century learning culture. In maker education, collaborative learning takes place through and around various digital and traditional technologies, which provide the means for students' creati...

This systematic literature review focuses on the research published on K-12 maker education in the early 2020s, providing a current picture of the field. Maker education is a hands-on approach to learning that encourages students to engage in collaborative and innovative activities, using a combination of traditional design and fabrication tools an...

In Norway, makerspaces are emerging as new educational contexts across all school levels. This trend is multifaceted as it is inspired by the global maker movement and supported by local initiatives as well as a national policy to create more opportunities to teach digital competencies. The makerspace concept facilitates this in a concrete and inno...

This study analyzed collaborative invention projects by teams of lower-secondary (13–14-year-old) Finnish students. In invention projects, student teams design and make materially embodied collaborative inventions using traditional and digital fabrication technologies. This investigation focused on the student teams’ knowledge creation processes by...

The maker mindset has been identified as one of the focal elements in maker education, and in formal education, teachers have a key role in nurturing it in their students. The maker mindset has been examined mainly theoretically and in relation to students. The present, empirical study explores teachers’ maker mindsets and investigates how teachers...

Mood boards have notable potential to serve as inspirational tools in design. However, we still do not fully understand how mood boards are created utilizing material found online in collaborative educational settings. The purpose of our study is to deepen our understanding of both team design and the creation of shared digital mood boards through...

This paper investigates the active role of materials in shaping ideation processes during interdisciplinary studio-based collaborations. Using ethnographic data collected from a graduate-level course conducted across multiple studio settings, we analysed how materiality facilitates interactions between students and studio instructors who are meetin...

Current discussions in practice-led design research concentrate on the thoughtful dimension of working with materials and the problem of analyzing acts of making at the scale of individual practice. Informed by the theoretical tenets of sociomateriality, this paper encloses a practice-led study addressing both issues. We followed the making of a co...

The study examines students’ disciplinary learning in physics and interdisciplinary science learning opportunities that students encounter during a collaborative invention project. Thirteen student teams (aged 11 to 12, N = 46) designed and constructed a prototype of a technology invention meant to solve one of the challenges students face in daily...

This investigation involved carrying out interventions that engaged teams of lower-secondary (13–14-year-old) Finnish students in using traditional and digital fabrication technologies to make materially embodied collaborative inventions. By relying on video data and ethnographic observations of the student teams' collaborative invention processes,...

This article discusses research from the Design Experimentation and Exploration (DEE) course in the higher education context. The DEE course was designed to support MA design students’ understanding of their creativity in an explorative course. The data were drawn from the students’ weekly and final reflections, as well as from the notes by one of...

This research explores the use of a non-linear maker pedagogy for implementing a major change in the Finnish national core curriculum. The latest curriculum change (2014) introduced so-called transversal competences, but also a major change for the subject of crafts: ‘multi-material’ crafts that involve former separately taught textile and technica...

Earlier studies have indicated that mood boards have notable potential. The impact of collectively created mood boards on individual ideation, however, has not been thoroughly studied. This article demonstrates how to bring together collaborative and individual elements in design education. We analysed the role of specific, collectively created, mo...

The present investigation examined cross-age peer tutoring in the context of organising a technology-enhanced STEAM project aimed at bringing elements of maker culture to a lower secondary school. We examined how 8th graders tutored 7th graders in programming skills. The participants were peer tutors (n = 15) studying in a technology-oriented class...

Experimental research on the psychophysiological effects of different art materials and tasks is still scarce. This mixed methods research focused on physiological changes and emotional experiences in drawing and clay forming during the tasks of copying, creating novel designs and free improvisation within fast and slow timeframes. It combined an e...

In this design and development research, we revisit the term affordance and explore its contribution to understanding and facilitating collaborative designing in educational settings. Collaborative designing requires students to frame the design task and generate their design ideas by constructing the problem and solution together. We focused on va...

Carrying out proper food practices in family life is seen as the inherent and taken-for-granted responsibility of parents. However, the theoretically solid and comprehensive picture of coordination relating to parental food practices is missing. This study aims to map the coordination of cooking-related practices in today’s hurried family life. By...

A guide to computational thinking education, with a focus on artificial intelligence literacy and the integration of computing and physical objects. Computing has become an essential part of today's primary and secondary school curricula. In recent years, K–12 computer education has shifted from computer science itself to the broader perspective of...

Home economics (HE) teachers are obligated to develop their education so that the subject is current and promotes the well-being of the individual, family and larger community. This qualitative study provides insight into the student competencies and skills that Finnish HE teachers perceive to be important in the future and also how HE teaching sho...

The craft sciences have emerged as a field of academic research in Finland, Sweden and Norway since the early 1990s. In Finland, craft research has examined various aspects of crafts using a multidisciplinary approach adapting a range of methods from other academic disciplines according to the research topic. Another source has been the schools of...

The study focuses on examining elementary pupils’ (N = 42, 11–13 years old) reflections on collaborative design processes, team collaboration and their co-inventions. Digital and traditional fabrication technologies were used in a 2-year co-invention project containing approximately 16 sessions during year 1 and 11 sessions in year 2. Between the t...

Techne Series - Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A, 28(3), 1-14. The purpose of the article is to introduce a systematic, three-level video analysis method for tracing the emotional aspects of a collaborative design and making process. Maker-centred learning can evoke strong emotions affecting students' motivation because it involves t...

This paper investigates the sociomateriality of collective creation in the context of a design studio project. Grounded in a relational approach that has influenced a multitude of studies in various fields, the notion of sociomateriality accounts for the constitutive entanglement of the social and the material in practice. How this entanglement occ...

The research study focuses on the phenomenon of informal learning and teaching, as it materializes through the quiltmakers’ engagement in idiosyncratic community practices. The present study considers the construction of craft knowledge from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on social and material mediation, and embodiment as a form of meaning-...

Introduction: Pandemic has proved to be a game-changer for higher education. The emerging context of using different social media tools for timely completion of their graduate and postgraduate research is evident among health sciences pre-service researchers during the pandemic. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with health sciences p...

In this article, we examine the dynamic, active role of materiality in collaborative maker-centered learning and propose a systematic way of analyzing it. Learning by making involves students in externalizing their ideas through conceptual, visual, and material artifacts. The collaborative process requires students to manage the design task and org...

The craft sciences have emerged as a field of academic research in Finland, Sweden and Norway since the early 1990s. In Finland, craft research has examined various aspects of crafts using a multidisciplinary approach, adapting a range of methods from other academic disciplines according to the research topic. Another source has been the schools of...

This chapter discusses “doing” educational research with two quilting communities located in Aotearoa New Zealand. The ethnographic inquiry explores the phenomenon of informal learning and teaching as they materialise through the quilters’ communal practices. Collective quiltmaking is often marginalised by non-quilters as a “granny” activity bounde...

The purpose of this study was to analyse the early phase of apparel design process and how professional designers develop their kernel idea by sketching and how visual sources stimulate their ideation. Three designers were asked to design a piece of outerwear while thinking aloud in an experimental design session. The data (i.e. verbal and video pr...

Co-teaching is regularly paired with school improvements and educational reforms, yet research does not clearly separate the challenges of co-teaching for teacher professional development, course improvement and for wider reforms. We explored how co-teaching emerged and what barriers teachers experienced as meaningful for their co-teaching after a...

The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze comple...

The purpose of the present investigation was to analyze the pedagogical infrastructures in three cycles of seventh graders' co-invention projects that involved using traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing and creating complex artefacts. The aim of the projects was to create high-end multi-material makerspaces by expanding Fi...

In this study, we examined maker‐centred learning from an epistemic perspective, highlighting the agentic role of material engagement and artefacts in learning and creativity. The use of physical materials plays a crucial role in maker activities where the socio‐epistemic aspects of knowledge creation entangle with the designing and making of physi...

This article discusses the informal learning processes of a quilting community, located in Aotearoa New Zealand, as participants engage in a collaborative textile project. Few studies have investigated everyday quilters’ collective learning processes, even though communal quiltmaking has been undertaken over the centuries. The concept of zone of pr...

The present researchers studied elementary school students’ use of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in their craft education over a three-year period. The data consisted of the textual and the visual content of the students’ (n= 38) ePortfolios. The students’ productions were analyzed and conceptualized through the qualitative analysis of conten...

Co-invention projects in elementary school engage pupils in complex, open-ended design tasks in a practical, hands-on way. Physical materials are an intrinsic part of design, involving transformation of conceptual ideas into material forms, such as prototypes. These tangible objects mediate embodied thinking and act as material-social mediators of...

Materialization of ideas is an essential aspect of maker-centered learning. The role of materiality, however, is little researched area, especially among young students. Our aim in the present study is to explore how material objects are involved in organization of collaboration in a secondary school co-invention project, where students collaborati...

Entrepreneurship education plays an important role in social and economic development of a society through providing self-employment and job opportunities for others. Entrepreneurship education can catalyse entrepreneurial mindset through developing entrepreneurial intentions of graduates. Current study aims to validate entrepreneurial intentions q...

This article presents a multi-method case study of five mobile device and desktop computer applications intended specifically for craft-design. The main aim of the study was to investigate the effects of application usage on the craft-design process and to analyse the usability of the applications from three perspectives: user experience, tradition...

The purpose of this study was to explore six-year-old Finnish preschoolers' collaboration during a designing session, where they received a task to collaboratively design and sketch forest animals' nests. Peer interaction is a natural part of craft, design and technology education because the learning situation itself provides various possibilities...

While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were gi...

The authors studied students' experiences of using an electronic portfolio over four years to develop its use as a method of documentation. The main research question focused on the pupils' experiences of the functions and the benefits of using an electronic portfolio. AUTHENTIC EVIDENCES The ePortfolio is a personalized tracking of learning (e.g.,...

This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative designing. We compared novice designers’ use of sketching against gesturing in early ideation and rough visualisation. To preserve the kinesic character of gestures, we developed a detailed video analysis method, which revealed that the majority of sketching...

Art and craft practitioners have personal experience of the benefits of making: the handling of material can help to regulate our mental states through providing a means to reach flow states. The mirror neuron system helps in skill learning, and the plasticity of the brain ensures that skills may be learned at all stages of life. Arts and crafts pl...

This article discusses how contemporary craft and design practitioners negotiate and apply ‘tradition’ in the materiality of creative making. By doing so, it aims to demonstrate how hybridization is crucial to an innovative renewal of traditional craft practice. With the data derived from two design competitions, the article proposes a new conceptu...

In the design studio, within educational contexts, sketching, model-making and prototyping of tangible objects are parts of the design process that support students in achieving final design solutions. This paper presents research in which three design experiments involving design studio settings, using a Learning by Collaborative Designing model f...

This explorative case study longitudinally examines teacher orchestration of an inquiry learning process in a technology-enhanced elementary classroom. A 13-month investigative study on cultural artifacts was conducted on 32 fourth grade students who progressed to the fifth grade during the project. The activities were mediated and documented using...

The authors investigated primary school pupils' experiences using an electronic portfolio in their craft education for a three year period, from the 3rd grade until the end of the 5th grade. This article emphasizes the functions and the benefits of the ePortfolio method and outlines general user experiences based on pupil interviews (N=38), which r...

This issue of FORMakademisk features selected articles developed from papers presented at the symposium Embodied Making and Design Learning at the DRS/CUMULUS-conference LearnXDesign in Chicago, Illinois, June 28–30, 2015. This special issue was developed as an initiative by the symposium conveners. The symposium was developed by researchers from r...

The embodiment of tools and experiential knowledge of materials gained over time lies at the heart of both design and craft practices. However, empirical studies combining the study of mind and body in relation to design and craft practice is in its infancy. In the Handling Mind project, we conducted psychophysiological experiments in order to illu...

This article is based on a study of novice designers’ knowledge of materials in a challenging collaborative assignment. We approached material knowledge from two complementary viewpoints: the dimensions of knowledge shared during designing, and how student teams built new knowledge during making. We found that both modalities studied—namely, words...

Designing and making crafts is a complex, multifaceted process that requires sophisticated, professional thinking and competence, described as reflection in action and as an embodied process in which the hand, eye and mind collaborate. This article discusses these cognitive and embodied aspects central to designing and making crafts in light of cog...

The purpose of the present article is to analyse textile teacher students’ collaborative designing of a functional 3D textile puzzle for visually impaired children. The data collection took place across three sessions of collaborative designing: defining design constraints, visualization and building a mock-up. Twelve first-year university-level st...

Material and embodied practices are an intrinsic part of craft and design education. This article reports a study in which textile teacher-students designed three-dimensional toys based on children's drawings. Three students in each team worked on the given materials and designed the shape of the toy together. Materials for designing were either: 1...

This chapter examines how designing, particularly collaborative designing, could be promoted in technology education classrooms. A few pedagogical models, where the design process is approached through collaborative inquiry, are presented. One approach, Learning by Collaborative Design (LCD), is described in greater detail, because of its unique ap...

The aim of this study was to explore a preschooler craft-making process in which 18 preschool novices cut pieces for fabric bags and designed and printed patterns to decorate the bags. Through the task, children were familiarised with a small-scale holistic craft process. The intention was to determine how preschoolers perceived, verbalised and int...

The experiential knowledge of practice resides within the practitioner and is out of the immediate reach for other researchers. Only when practitioners have an intrinsic motivation to research and make their practice explicit can their embodied experiential knowledge reach an outside audience. The present case study is an attempt to access and unde...

In the field of design, the challenge in the ideation process is determining how to balance between constraining a task and at the same time creating new paths for expression. The focus of this article is on students’ idea generation process during the module of their textile design learning in a higher-education programme. In the module, students...

This study examined pedagogical aspects of virtual designing. It focused on how an industrial design teacher organized a plastic product design course and how the teacher guided student teams’ design processes in a virtual design studio. The model of Learning by Collaborative Design was used as a pedagogical and analytical framework. The study empl...

The present study investigated professional designers’ practices in context, the role of their design tools and materials, the organization of their daily work and social connections related to their ongoing design projects. We examined the feasibility of using contextual event sampling as a method of studying professional design practices; this me...

The process of design is a complex, multifaceted activity that requires sophisticated professional thinking and competence, described as reflection in action and embodied process where hand, eye, and mind collaborate. We propose that cognitive neuroscience provide valuable tools for analysing processes of thinking and acting relevant to designing....

The experiential knowledge of a practice lives within the practitioner and is out of reach for an outsider researcher. Only when practitioners have intrinsic motivation in researching their practice, can experiential knowledge reach an outside audience. The present case study is an attempt to access some of the issues forming the embodied knowledge...

In addressing the subject of ideation in design, this paper reports on a series of focused interviews with nine professional designers from the fields of textile, fashion and interior design. The study concentrated on the practices undertaken by the designers before they come to, or form, a tentative idea for the design project. We were interested...

This article describes an embodied way of making sense through making with the hands. We examine the potential o ftactile experience in the making process and analyse what tactile experiences mean. The study takes place in the context of an era marked by audio-visual dominance.The article presents a case study that observed and interviewed deafblin...

Design practice involves multifaceted activities related to creative processes involving various design tools and material. In the present exploratory study, we investigated the feasibility of using contextual event sampling as a method of studying design activities, materiality and emotions in the making process. 'Event sampling' refers to a resea...

The general objective of the present study was to analyze how elementary school students developed environmental competence during an architectural project. The computer-supported collaborative learning environment was used to support the participants’ collaborative design activities. The main research question: What kind of design learning process...

This study focused on alternative images of the future of craft and design students. The main research question was as follows: What are the possible alternative futures for the craft and design field, in the eyes of Finnish craft and design students? This was examined through narrative storytelling, students' future stories (N=72) were collected i...

The present study examines peer collaboration during elementary students' lamp designing process. By exploring how different aspects of discourse relate to each other as well as to the various tools being used, we aimed to unfold the nature of the collaborative design process. The video recorded design episodes of one student team constituted the d...

The main goal of the present study was to provide insights into how disciplinary expertise might be infused into Design and Technology classrooms and how authentic processes based on professional design practices might be constructed. We describe elementary students’ collaborative lamp designing process, where the leadership was provided by a profe...

The purpose of the present article was to analyze the interaction between elementary students and a professional design expert. The expert was present in the classroom, facilitating a collaborative lamp designing process together with the teacher. Using the notion of figured worlds (Holland et al. 1998), we explored how learning could be expanded b...

The purpose of this study was to describe the sources of inspiration and the emergence of mental images in a virtual design course. The study was conducted in The Department of Home Economics and Craft Science at the University of Helsinki. During the virtual course, eleven students designed fabric collage textiles and carried out exercises using t...

The purpose of the present article is to examine the knowledge-practice based approach to technology-enhanced learning. Toward that end, the article reports the efforts of an elementary-school teacher and researchers in promoting genuine inquiry at the 4th and 5th grade of a Finnish elementary school. We will describe implementation and social orga...

The general objective of the present study was to investigate how elementary school students engage in their knowledge construction processes in computer-supported collaborative learning. We will report a longitudinal case study of a teacher's and researchers' effort to create classroom activities and social practices that support genuine participa...

The present study introduces the "Facilitating Social Creativity through Collaborative Designing" project, an undertaking aimed at developing and testing Virtual Design Studios (VDS) in education and professional communities. VDS is a pedagogical approach supported by collaborative technologies, focused on engaging learners in the co-design of vari...

The purpose of the present article is to examine how virtual design studio environments can be used to aid collaborative designing and to describe some of our experiences in supporting collaborative design with such environments. The authors will introduce three design projects. These were projects, respectively, for designing clothes for premature...

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the differences and effects of user participation in university level students' collaborative design processes. The study focused on how intended users (i.e., frequent conference-goers) participated in a product design process (designing conference bags) and how much influence these conference-goers h...

This study examined the intensity of collaboration in computer supported collaborative designing. It focused on how ten teams of university level students of textile teaching shared their designing process in a virtual learning environment. An authentic task involving clothing for premature babies was used. The study employed qualitative content an...

The purpose of the present study was to analyze whether and how students working in the collaborative learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE2) were able to share their design process with the intended user of the product. We organized a collaborative design course in which six teams of first-year university-level textile students (N...

The purpose of the present study was to examine how collaborative designing could be facilitated by a new generation networked learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE-Tools) and to analyze whether and how students working in the environment were able to share their design process. The study was carried out by analyzing qualitatively...

The purpose of this study was to analyze qualitative differences between novices' and experts' design processes and investigate the relationships between visual and technical designing in depth. Four participants, two professional weaving designers and two graduate students of textiles, participated in the protocol-analysis study. The results of th...

The purpose of the present study was to examine how a web-based networked learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE-Tools) supported collaborative designing. We organized a course in which teams of first-year university level textile students (N=31) solved an authentic and complex design task with the help of the collaborative environm...