Making for Change: Becoming Community Engineering Experts through Makerspaces and Youth Ethnography

做出改变：通过创客空间和青年民族志成为社区工程专家

• 批准号: 1421116
• 负责人: Angela Calabrese Barton
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1421116&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Making; Change; Becoming; Community; Engineering

Many communities across the country are developing "maker spaces," environments that combine physical fabrication equipment, social communities of people working together, and educational activities for learning how to design and create objects. Increasingly, maker spaces and maker technologies are being designed to provide extended learning opportunities for school-aged young people. Unfortunately few youth from under-represented populations have had the opportunity to participate in these maker spaces. This proof-of-concept project, a collaboration of faculty from Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro with staff of the Boys and Girls Clubs in Lansing and Greensboro, will address two challenges faced by middle school youth from backgrounds underrepresented in engineering professions: 1) a lack of opportunities to learn engineering meaningfully and to apply it to understanding and solving real-world problems (i.e. learning), and 2) few experiences that foster the ability to see oneself as an important, contributing producer and consumer of engineering (i.e. identity). The team will develop and study an informal (out-of-school) STEM learning model to engage middle school youth from underrepresented backgrounds in experiences related to engineering-for-sustainable-communities. The model engages youth both in maker spaces and in conducting community ethnography studies to identify local problems and then to design potential solutions for them. The participants will also be connected into a broader social network of experts. Using a design-based research approach and applying social practice theory and systems theory, the work will identify how critical aspects of the learning environment shape identity work. This will yield information on the value and affect of the instructional tools that will be produced. The team hypothesizes that, by alternating over time between maker spaces activities and community ethnography studies, youth will a) reflect upon what they know and need to know to define problems and design solutions, b) develop stronger engineering identities, and c) realize the potential they have to make change in their community. Professionals in education and engineering will benefit from additional empirical evidence for how identity unfolds over time, across learning contexts, and how it promotes opportunities to learn in engineering.

全国许多社区都在开发“制造商空间”，结合物理制造设备，工作人员的社会社区以及学习如何设计和创建对象的教育活动的环境。 制造商空间和制造商技术越来越多地为学龄性的年轻人提供扩展的学习机会。 不幸的是，来自代表性不足的人群的年轻人很少有机会参加这些制造商的空间。这个概念证明项目，密歇根州立大学的教职员工和格林斯伯勒大学与兰辛和格林斯伯勒的男孩和女孩俱乐部的员工的合作，将在中学青年面临的两个挑战中面临的两个挑战，这些挑战来自于在工程专业中缺乏代表性的背景，无法学习和解决工程的机会：1）学习和解决工程的机会。体验能够将自己视为重要的，有影响力的生产者和工程消费者（即身份）的能力。 该团队将开发和研究一种非正式的（校外）STEM学习模型，以使中学年轻人从代表性不足的背景中吸引与工程 - 可持续社区相关的经验。该模型在制造商空间和进行社区人种志研究中都吸引了青年，以确定当地问题，然后为他们设计潜在的解决方案。参与者还将连接到更广泛的专家社交网络。 使用基于设计的研究方法并应用社会实践理论和系统理论，该工作将确定学习环境的关键方面如何形成身份。 这将产生有关将要生产的教学工具的价值和影响的信息。团队假设，通过在制造商空间活动和社区人种志研究之间随着时间的推移交替，青年将反思他们所知道的和需要知道的定义问题和设计解决方案，b）发展更强的工程身份，c）意识到他们必须改变社区的潜力。 教育和工程专业人士将从其他经验证据中受益，证明身份如何随着时间的流逝，学习环境以及如何促进工程学习机会。