This study investigated the impact of participating in a year-long digital-fabrication course on high-school seniors' problem-solving skills, with a focus on problems involving mechanistic systems. The research questions centered on whether working in a makerspace impacted students' abilities to solve such problems and whether the process data…

The emergence of immersive VR technology in K-12 educational spaces has created a need for research examining the affordances and constraints of this technology for student learning. The current study uses a case-study methodology to illustrate K-12 secondary science teachers' perceived affordances and constraints of using immersive VR tools to…

Recent work in science education has emphasized the importance of the conceptual, social, and epistemic dimensions in science learning. But what about the material dimension--the actual physical materials that students use? The way their characteristics and affordances limit or determine instruction has thus far not been as thoroughly explored.…

Within engineering education, informal, out-of-school making experiences and parent-child interactions within home environments are both considered as a promising context for the development of engineering discourse and practices. However, less is known about how parents support children's engagement in engineering learning, particularly when they…

Amidst this era of rapid technological advancement, the impact of White dominance in STEM causes inequity throughout the design, implementation, and function of modern technologies. Evidence of this includes AI systems that perpetuate racial and gender biases, medical devices that are incompatible with non-White medical needs, and hiring…

Despite recent efforts to support learners from traditionally minoritized backgrounds in mathematics, inequities in math achievement and participation still exist, particularly for women and people of color. Additionally, much of how math is taught in schools aligns with a particular epistemology that comes from western mathematicians and…

Computer science teaching standards for grades K-8 have been implemented in nearly all U.S. states, and the core subject area teachers (e.g., math, science, English, social studies) have been asked to integrate these standards into their instruction. Thus, it is important that K-8 pre-service teachers of all subjects are both prepared and…

This paper extends research that looks at the intersection of multimodal composing and maker education. We present findings from a fourth iteration of a multidisciplinary classroom design study in which high school youth made digital comics based on literary novels in an 11th grade language arts classroom in a predominantly Hispanic, low-SES,…

Maker education provides the perfect context for young learners to develop 21st-century skills. However, research is inconclusive on how these skills could be assessed. Namely, the complex nature of 21st-century skills requires different types of assessments, not necessarily relying on paper-and-pencil or multiple-choice tests, but rather drawing…

Makerspaces persist as formal and informal spaces of learning for youth, promoting continued interest in studying how design can support the variety of learning opportunities within these spaces. However, much of the current research examining learning in makerspaces neglects the perspectives of educators. This not only hinders our understanding…

A qualitative study was conducted in a secondary school to evaluate student learning processes and outcomes by examining their inquiry questions, journals, and maker artifacts in a curriculum-based maker learning environment supported by the Guided Inquiry Design (GID). Thirteen 8th-grade students in a suburban middle school in the southwest of…

In this manuscript, we describe a coding club we created and implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were purposeful in creating the club to: (a) focus on design and problem solving as the basis for learning computer coding and (b) include elements to improve the engagement of girls. We ran multiple iterations of a Girls Design with Code Club…

Makerspaces, especially in their diverse proliferating forms, support a broad variety of learning outcomes. There is rich work in attempting to understand and describe these learning goals. Yet, there is a lack of support for practitioners and educators to assess the learning in events and programming at makerspaces (and similar environments)…

Public libraries have embraced the popularity of maker education and makerspaces by integrating maker education in their program offerings, and by developing makerspaces that enable patrons to tinker and create products. But less attention has been paid to supporting librarians and maker educators in assessing the impact of these spaces. To expand…

Adoption of Maker programs entails deep cultural and structural changes within schools. In this case study, we interviewed a principal and seven faculty members in a high school in the United States, after the first year of implementing making-centered curricula. We report how faculty members responded to the reform, their motivations and beliefs,…