Educating Teachers for the Maker Movement: Pre-service Teachers' Experiences Facilitating Maker Activities

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an event where 33 pre-service elementary school teachers planned and facilitated a School Maker Faire as part of their elementary science teaching methods course. We focus on one group of four pre-service teachers who facilitated a balloon rocket station and examine the decisions they made when facilitating children's interactions at the stations and how these decisions led to constraining or creating opportunities for children to engage in engineering design.

Full text

Educating Teachers for the Maker Movement: Pre-service
Teachers’ Experiences Facilitating Maker Activities
Sean O’Brien, Alexandria K. Hansen, Danielle B. Harlow
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9490
{sobrien, akillian, dharlow}@education.ucsb.edu
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we describe an event where 33 pre-service
elementary school teachers planned and facilitated a School
Maker Faire as part of their elementary science teaching methods
course. We focus on one group of four pre-service teachers who
facilitated a balloon rocket station and examine the decisions they
made when facilitating children’s interactions at the stations and
how these decisions led to constraining or creating opportunities
for children to engage in engineering design.
CCS Concepts
•Applied Computing!Education!Interactive Learning
Environments
Keywords
School Maker Faire; Maker Education; Teacher Education;
Elementary Schools; Facilitation
1. INTRODUCTION
While the Maker Movement is more commonly associated with
informal learning spaces such as museums and afterschool clubs,
the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards [1] makes
this an ideal time to consider how maker education can enhance
existing practices in K-12 schools. Ensuring this movement is
accessible to all children is critical, particularly when considering
the underrepresentation of females and some ethnic groups among
professional scientists and engineers. In 2008, 75% of scientists
and engineers were Caucasian, 13% were Asian, 5% were
Hispanic and less than 5% were African American. Furthermore,
only 35% of the total amount of scientists and engineers were
women [2]. The excitement surrounding maker education for
learning and recent advances in technologies can be leveraged to
address the lack of diversity among professional scientists and
engineers. To do so, we must prepare K-12 teachers to introduce
making within the classroom rather than only in out-of-school
contexts that are typically limited to a subset of the population.
This year, we transformed a university science methods course for
elementary school teachers to include a focus on maker education.
The pre-service teachers planned and facilitated a School Maker
Faire with a specific focus on assessing student learning in the
context of making. This teaching context differed considerably
from their prior teaching experiences. We observed and
interviewed these teachers to understand their experiences.
2. BACKGROUND
Papert’s theory of constructionism paved the way for rethinking
the current state of education through including making [3]. Too
often, school is viewed as separate from students’ every day lives
and not focused on what students want to learn [4,5], requiring
many students to look outside of formal education to fulfill their
curiosities. By integrating technology in student-centered learning
environments such as maker spaces in schools, more students are
finding value in school [6]. When students create with technology
they “become more engaged, spend more time investigating
and/or constructing and take ownership for and build confidence
in their abilities to learn and understand” [7]. Moreover, making
activities appeal to a wide range of learners, with varying interests
and skills, including individuals who do not consider themselves
particularly skilled in science or mathematics.
Only recently has research begun to focus attention on making in
formal education [8,9], and research on how to prepare teachers to
facilitate maker education activities within the traditional
classroom setting is beginning to emerge. Martin et al. [10]
conducted a professional development for 30 middle and high
school teachers that focused on design-based learning and creating
with technology such as Arduinos and 3D printers. The
participating teachers were proud of their creations, but struggled
with the technology and the required programming. Wardrip and
Brahms [11] described experiences with a mobile makerspace
associated with MAKESHOP at the Children’s Museum of
Pittsburgh. They partnered with two suburban elementary schools
to integrate making into the curriculum. Educators at both schools
attended a summer “boot camp” and participated in ongoing
training from museum facilitators. The preliminary findings
identified three factors that influenced whether the teachers
implemented making in their classrooms: 1) how school
leadership selected participating teachers, 2) available space for
making, and 3) how making was (or was not) connected to
learning already occurring in the classroom. Successful teachers
wanted to incorporate making into their classrooms, found
creative ways to connect making to other content areas, and did
better when there was a designated space for making. Our study
differs from these earlier studies in that we study pre-service
teachers in an elementary teacher credential program.
3. STUDY DESIGN
This work is part of a larger study that takes a design-based
research approach. Design based research “focuses on the
messiness or real-world practices, with the context being a core
part of the story and not an extraneous variable to be trivialized”
[12]. Such an approach assumes that learning and the contexts in
which learning occurs are complex and involve the simultaneous
and mutually reinforcing tasks of designing curricula or learning
contexts and systematically observing learning. Outcomes include
changes to the local context and contributions to models of how
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,
requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
Fablearn’16, October 15–16, 2016, Stanford, CA, USA.
Copyright 2016 ACM 978-1-4503-4802-7/16/10 …$15.00.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3003397.3003414

learners think. Ultimately, we seek to identify the pedagogical
practices that beginning teachers need in order to facilitate
effective maker education activities in their classrooms and the
types of experiences that help teachers develop these practices.
3.1 Participants and Context
The participants were enrolled in an elementary school teacher
credential program. Of the 33 students, 29 were female. As is
typical of California teacher education programs, all entering
students had previously finished their undergraduate degree. The
13-month teacher credential program spanned an academic year,
including the summer before and after. The Elementary Science
Methods course was held during the second half of the program.
The course met 10 times for three hours each. Students began this
class having already completed two quarters (summer and fall) of
coursework and had spent five months in elementary school
classrooms. The course was taught by a member of the faculty and
a graduate student teaching assistant (both authors of this paper).
The primary goals of the class were to introduce teacher
candidates to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and
help them develop strategies and content knowledge that would
help them begin their teaching careers as well-started beginners
[13] in the area of science. In the 2015-2016 year, the course
emphasized Maker Education and design thinking. We used
research on teacher education and on informal science learning to
develop an initial set of experiences for pre-service teachers in a
teacher credential program. These experiences included
participating in the type of learning we expect them to teach, in
this case Maker Education activities, focused attention on
children’s learning through video analysis of children engaging in
engineering activities, facilitating informal science learning
activities, along with learning about the NGSS. Teachers also
received explicit instruction on design thinking and opportunities
to practice the design process, in line with Stanford’s Institute of
Design [14]. We considered design thinking as a mindset to
approach problems, and the process of design as the iterative
combination of steps involved in creating solutions to the
problems. The culminating activity was that the teacher
candidates facilitated a School Maker Faire for the local
elementary school students in their practicum courses. It is this
event (the School Maker Faire) that we focus on in this paper.
3.2 Data Collection and Analysis
Consistent with design-based research, we collected a variety of
types of data including student work, final reflections, class
observations, video and audio recordings of a subset of students
engaging with children at the School Maker Faire event, and
interviews with a subset of the video recorded students about their
interactions with children and decisions they made at the event
and in preparation for the event. Our goal in this paper is to
understand the events at the School Maker Faire and how the
participating teachers engaged with children.
To understand this event, a subset of pre-service teachers were
filmed during the School Maker Faire and interviewed following
the event. These interviews used stimulated recall [15]. That is,
the pre-service teachers were shown video of themselves
interacting with students and asked what they were thinking about
at the time. This allowed focusing in on specific instances where
the teacher candidates choose to interact with children or not.
4. SCHOOL MAKER FAIRE EVENT
School Maker Faires focus on K-12 schools and are smaller than
flagship or mini Maker Faires and the focus is inward looking—
celebrating the work of individuals and groups at the particular
school. Licensed School Maker Faires (free registration on their
website) have permission to use the School Maker Faire logo, are
provided with print resources detailing best practices for hosting a
maker faire, and are introduced to a community of other School
Maker Faire producers to share resources, questions, and stories.
Our School Maker Faire was unusual in that the school was a
teacher education program and our guests were the children (and
their families) in the 33 elementary school classrooms the teacher
candidates were placed in for their student teacher placement
classrooms. We also invited all local elementary teachers and
administrators. The event was held during the pre-service
teachers’ final class on a Thursday evening and lasted two and a
half hours. Over 400 visitors attended.
Prior to the School Maker Faire event, the pre-service teachers
worked in groups of 2-4 to develop a plan for a hands-on activity
that would invite and engage children to participate in a “making”
activity that connected to the NGSS performance expectations or
specific disciplinary core ideas, practices, and cross-cutting
concepts. We also invited local organizations that worked with
children, had displays made by children, held a panel discussion
with teachers who were already integrating maker education into
their classrooms, and held workshops about coding and 3D
printing. In total, we had 24 hands-on booths or student displays
which included making circuits from conductive playdough,
building and launching stomp rockets, building bird feeders from
recycled materials, and making and racing cars from Lego and
others. Here we focus on one specific activity, balloon rockets.
This activity was filmed in its entirety at the School Maker Faire,
and all pre-service teachers in the group consented to participate
in research. Following the School Maker Faire all participated in
at least two interviews about the event and their interactions. Four
students (referred to here as Mary, Amber, Ruth, and Sally)
worked on the balloon rockets station. Children attached a balloon
(or multiple balloons) to a toilet paper roll or straw, and added
fins or other structures to the rockets. The rockets were propelled
forward along a string when air was released from the balloon.
5. FINDINGS
The following subsections look at the ways the pre-service
teachers' attempted to facilitate design thinking and making while
also looking at the tensions they encountered.
5.1.1 Being Prepared
The first theme we identified was being prepared. Interviews
were coded for this when the pre-service teachers mentioned talk
about the need for or importance of preparation. The pre-service
teachers in the focus group universally described the desire and
need to be prepared for the maker faire- a logical motivation
considering that the faire ultimately received around 400 visitors
To prepare the pre-service teachers for the event, a mock Maker
Fare was held the previous week in their Methods course. Prior to
the mock Maker Faire, this group planned to make balloon
powered cars, not rockets. However, as they set up the station for
their peers, they got stuck on how to prepare the materials for the
event. They conceptualized the balloon cars activity as a station
containing specific pre-prepared parts for the cars and step-by-
step directions so that children could easily assemble the cars. For
these pre-service teachers, preparation included drilling holes in
bottle caps (wheels), cutting straws (axles), and cutting cardboard
(the car body). As they prototyped their balloon car, and tried to
propel it forward, they struggled to make it move. They concluded
that the balloon cars were both preparation-intensive and too
difficult for kids to assemble in a way that would yield positive
results (i.e., the car moving forward).

During an interview, Ruth recalled asking herself, "How can we
actually make this an activity where they could try out different
things?" One group member recalled an earlier suggestion to
make balloon rockets as an alternative to balloon cars. The group
repurposed their materials to see if they could get a balloon to
propel a rocket along a string. They taped a balloon to a section of
straw and put it on the string. When released, the rocket spun
around the string, travelling forward about a foot. This resulted in
excitement and other group members suggesting ideas for how to
get the rocket to travel further along the string. As the group
redesigned the rocket, one group member exclaimed, "This is so
fun! They [children] would love this! But we have to find a way to
make them be successful or they will be arguing.” At this point,
preparing for the School Maker Faire provided an opportunity for
the pre-service teachers to participate in design thinking. The pre-
service teachers recognized this as the type of experience that they
hoped to have kids participate in. Yet, they felt they still needed to
"find a way to make them be successful."
During their post-event interview, all four of pre-service teachers
reported feeling unprepared for the School Maker Faire before the
event. Amber recalled being concerned that they only, "had a box
of materials, but no model for [the children] to go from." For
Amber, preparation meant having an example or model rocket for
kids to refer to and "a solution for every problem that might come
up.” The pre-service teachers indicated a strong desire to feel and
be prepared, and identified that this included preparing materials,
physical models for students to imitate, and anticipating every
problem that might come up. Yet they also recognized that they
had limited time and were not able to do all they hoped.
5.1.2 Providing Structure
All group members reported that they thought part of their job as
facilitators was to provide structure. They did so by providing
instructions, by modeling thinking, asking guiding questions, and
by parallel play. One way they provided structure in the students’
design process was by (verbally) providing a framework of steps
that visitors could use when building rockets. Amber described
how she tried to organize a way for students to think about
building a rocket: “We just said, "This is what we have. Choose
your body first." I guess we did a give a little bit of direction in
that. We didn't just say, “Go,” we said, "Choose your body first.
Choose your balloon color and how you want to tape it onto the
body, and then choose a string." There was some direction, but
there was no model for them to look at to go off of.”
They also provided structure in interactions with kids when things
did not go right. For example, when a student’s rocket design did
not go as planned, Mary enthusiastically said something like,
“Whoa! Look at it spin! Why do you think it just sat there and
spun?!” She made an observation and asked the student to explain
why it might have happened. Mary described that she did so to
model how one can look at failure, and further question and refine
their design. In another example, Ruth, when working with a
young boy who was building a balloon rocket, asked the boy, “Do
you think the size of the balloon matters, for how fast it will go?”
When he agreed, she expanded “More air… it will go faster?”
Again, the boy nodded. Ruth described asking this questions to
prompt the student to consider that the air inside the balloon was
propelling the rocket; the more air in the balloon, the further or
faster the rocket might travel. Her goal was to focus his attention
on the science concepts she hoped he was learning. Similarly,
Sally was working with a boy who had just flown his first rocket
and asked him questions such as: “What do you think affects how
well a rocket flies? Do you think weight matters? How about the
size of the balloon?” In the interview, she explained that by
asking him these questions she was trying to help structure his
thinking by getting him to think, “'What can I change to make this
better, to get this closer to my goal the next time'"? In contrast to
Ruth’s questions that focused students attention on specific
science ideas, Sally’s and Mary’s questions were more open
ended and allowed the child to focus attention on considering
what factors of the rocket could be changed and guided the
children to testing their ideas.
Finally, they demonstrated the design process for children at the
event. Ruth, for example, described that she constructed her own
rocket with wings, hoping to inspire children to experiment with
wings on their rockets, “I was just interested to see because I was
wondering if the kids would put wings on it? So then I put wings
on it to see what would happen.” Ruth's actions provided structure
by engaging in parallel play to try and spark thinking and interest.
5.1.3 Assessing Learning
Assessment came in many forms, among the pre-service teachers
in the balloon rockets group. As a theme, assessment was defined
as moments where a pre-service teacher attempted to understand
how or what a child was thinking. The guiding questions in the
above section were a form of assessment. Here we discus other
ways the pre-service teachers engaged in assessment.
Children’s actions often indicated their ideas about science. Ruth,
for example, described observing a child putting a rocket on the
string for the first time: “We wanted to see just a little quick
assessment, like, do the kids understand how their rockets are
working, do they get that the reason the rocket is moving that way
is because the air is blowing…out of the opposite end?” Ruth felt
that she could gauge the child’s understanding of cause and effect
by the direction he put the rocket on the string; for Ruth, his
actions were evidence of understanding. The pre-service teachers
also attempted to assess the level of students’ frustration. Mary
explained that she tried to gauge individual student emotional
states as a way to inform how much, or how little, scaffolding that
she should provide. Her strategy for this was to repeat back what
students said, as illustrated below.
STUDENT: “It [my rocket] didn’t work.”
Mary: “It didn’t work?”
STUDENT: “I can’t fix it.”
Mary: “You can’t fix it?”
STUDENT: “Well, I need to tape it.”
Mary: “Okay, so you just need to tape it.”
When looking at the video footage of this excerpt, Mary explained
that she remembered assessing that he did not seem frustrated but
more contemplative and since he was thinking about how to
modify his design, the best facilitation move for her was to step
out of the way and let him go.
5.1.4 Influence of Parents
Unlike classroom instruction, the School Maker Faire was a
family event. This meant that the pre-service teachers interacted
with children’s parents or interacted with children while being
observed by parents. Despite not anticipating parents to have a
significant impact on how the pre-service teachers facilitated the
activities, this emerged as a significant theme worth exploring.
The theme, influence of parents, refers to any moments during the
interviews where a pre-service teacher mentioned a way in which
a parent's presence influenced their thinking or actions.
Amber described, "It matters what parents think of their kids’
teachers. I wouldn't want them to view us as not having prepared
for an event that we're putting on for kids. I think that would look

very unprofessional." This is consistent with other comments.
Recall that Amber wanted to have a model for kids and a
contingency plan for every situation that might arise. This
revealed that, for Amber, teachers should appear prepared to
parents. Similarly, Ruth explained that when it came to having
parents around, "It was a lot different because it was a lot more
pressure…well what does the parent want me to say, what is he
expecting right now- is he expecting me to like give a little short
engineering lesson, you know?” Ruth's concerns about how she
was viewed by parents related to her perception that she was
expected to be a content expert.
6. DISCUSSION
In this study, we saw examples of the pre-service teachers framing
their role as facilitators of exploration, and encouraging design
thinking strategies as well as actions and interactions that were
influenced by their more traditional preconceptions that teachers
should provide step-by-step instructions and be content experts.
This movement back and forth between these two very different
roles appeared to create tensions at times. Below we discuss the
trends identified in the findings section.
We noted that the pre-service teachers struggled to feel prepared
in this environment—both in terms of material preparation and
cognitive preparation for engaging children in the activity. The
first aspect of preparation is simpler to address. As maker
education researchers and developers, we can design resources
and activities that do not require complicated preparation of
materials. Teachers’ time is limited and making it easier for them
to set up spaces and activities will allow them to focus on working
with children. The second aspect is more complicated. Engaging
children in activities where they are free to make decisions means
that children may explore questions, designs, and directions
unanticipated by the teachers. Indeed, student agency is a crucial
hallmark of maker education. Yet this also means, that it is
impossible for teachers to be prepared for all possible ideas that
children might articulate if they expect that being prepared means
to always know what will happen and the answers to all possible
questions. Re-conceptualizing being prepared as knowing how to
guide students’ explorations by providing materials, asking
questions with students, and engaging in the children’s curiosity
along with them can ease this tension.
The pre-service teachers also strove to provide structure. For
some, this meant step-by-step instructions and physical models of
a final product for the students to copy. For others, it meant asking
questions to structure students’ thinking towards design and
redesign based on specific variables (e.g., mass of the rocket). It is
not surprising that they were compelled to provide structure. In
fact, structure and design constraints benefit maker activities.
Explicit consideration of what constitutes productive “structure”
in a maker activity and how this compares with more traditional
classroom structures may help teachers navigate this tension.
A third area was assessment, which was required by the course.
This is an area that challenges researchers and educators of all
levels: how do we assess learning in maker activities? The
teachers in this study did so by observing children’s interactions,
talking about their reasoning for redesign, and probing student
thinking. In this case, the pre-service teachers point to productive
methods of assessing that we can build on in future work.
Many new teachers are understandably insecure in their role as
teachers. Teacher educators should recognize that their students
(pre-service teachers) are figuring out who they are and who they
will be in the classroom, and should provide explicit instructional
activities to help new teachers understand how their role as
classroom teachers might change as they adopt maker education
activities. Our work is a beginning step in identifying the tensions
and concerns of pre-service teachers as they attempt to facilitate
maker education activities, even in a scaffolded and supportive
environment. Identifying these concerns will help inform the
design of better learning contexts for pre-service teachers that
support their abilities to facilitate productive and powerful maker
education in their classrooms.
7. REFERENCES
[1] NGSS Lead States. 2013. Next Generation Science
Standards: For States, By States.
[2] U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education
Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, (2009).
[3] Papert, S., & Harel, I. 1991. Situating
constructionism. Constructionism, 36, 1-11.
[4] Barron, B. 2006. Interest and self-sustained learning as
catalysts of development: A learning ecology perspective.
Human Development, 49, 193-224.
[5] Dougherty, D. 2013. The maker mindset. In M. Honey & D.
Kanter (Eds.), Design Make Play: Growing the Next
Generation of STEM Innovators (7-16). Routledge, New
York, NY.
[6] Martin, L., & Dixon, C. 2013. Youth conceptions of making
and the maker movement. Proceedings from IDC ’13, New
York, NY.
[7] Petrich, M., Wilkinson, K., & Bevan, B. 2013. It looks like
fun, but are they learning? In M. Honey & D. Kanter (Eds.),
Design Make Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM
Innovators (50-70). Routledge, New York, NY.
[8] Sefton-Green, J. 2013. Learning at not-school: A review of
study, theory, and advocacy for education in non-formal
settings. MIT Press, New York, NY.
[9] Vossoughi, S. and Bevan, B. 2014. Making and Tinkering: A
Review of the literature. National Research Council
Committee on Out of School Time STEM. National
Research Council, Washington, DC.
[10] Martin, T., Brasiel, S., Graham, D., Smith, S., Gurko, K.,
Fields, D., & Smith, S. 2014. FabLab professional
development: Changes in teacher and student STEM content
knowledge. Proceedings from FabLearn ’14, Stanford, CA.
[11] Wardrip, P.S., & Brahms, L. 2014. Mobile MAKESHOP:
Preliminary Findings from Two School Sites. Proceedings
from FabLearn ’14, Stanford, CA.
[12] Barab, S., & Squire, K. 2004. Design-based research: Putting
a stake in the ground. J LEARN SCI, 13(1), 1-14.
[13] Hollon, R. E., Roth, K. J., & Anderson, C. W. 1991. Science
teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning. In J. Brophy
(Ed.), Advances in research in teaching (Vol. 2, 145-186).
JAI Press, Greenwich, CT. .
[14] Shavelson, R., Webb, N., Burstein, L. 1986. in M.C.
Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.)
Macmillan Publishing Company, New York.
[15] Institute of Design at Stanford. An educators guide to design
thinking. Retrieved from goo.gl/hzfvE6.