Motivational Desires
Why take a graduate course in maker education…? I am a faculty member at North Dakota State University, in the School of Education. I am a science educator who used to teach college chemistry, but now I teach teachers, administrators, and other educational professionals who are returning to school for advanced degrees. Mostly, I teach research methods. I have also been a maker since a was a little kid. I come from a creative and artistic family, so there were always tools, materials, and encouragement around. I took apart every toy I was given as a kid to find out how it worked (and to see if I could modify it). I suppose that is root of my love of science: I like to know how things work. It is not just about knowing how things work though. I mean, I do like that part. But I get more excited about the possibility that knowing opens up. Knowing how things works makes it possible to imagine new possibilities and ask new questions. So I am a maker first. Science and research are starting points for making.
That is a bit of a long-winded introduction, but it seemed like important context as I try to answer the question about my motivations for the class. Part of my reason for taking this class is that I think learning about maker education will help me find ways to make meaningful connections with these spaces.
I suppose my main motivation is a need for change. Teaching research methods if fine. It is a kind of science education, because I am teaching inquiry skills. It is also a kind of making: making meaning. But something is missing. For years – ever since I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – I have been obsessing over quality. Or, more precisely, I have been obsessing over how people get good at their craft – whatever that craft might be. I am fascinated by the deeply personal nature of the things we each pursue – when we have the autonomy and agency to do it. It starts with noticing, then being drawn in to wonder, then disciplined engagement, and at some point it is part of who we are – part of our identity. But identity requires community. I can’t be a unique individual without a community to recognize me as such – and we can’t have community without a diverse collection of unique individuals. Some of this has made it into my teaching, but I haven’t found a place for enough of it. Perhaps it has become part of who I am – and there isn’t enough space for that part in my current classroom. Or maybe there has been too much science without enough making. I am not sure. But part of my hope in taking this course is that knowing more about maker education will open new possibilities (whether they are reinventions of my current job – or something new and different).
The final motivation I will mention, for me to learn about maker education, is to do with matters to me as a teacher. Paolo Freiresaid that the primary occupation of all human beings is to become more human: humanization. To be able to do that freely is the essence of freedom. To be prevented from doing this is to be oppressed: de-humanized. Morally sound education seeks humanization. However, for teachers to attempt to bestow freedom on learners is false generosity. A learner cannot be free if they are dependent on their teacher as the source of their freedom. Teachers can create conditions for learners to find agency – but humanization requires learners to claim agency for themselves.
When asked how teaching influences learning, Jerome Bruner said that it opens possibility. That is how I have come to see my job as a teacher. I also like the way Jeff Duncan Andrade talks about this, saying a teacher’s job is to be a bulldozer, pushing back barriers for kids. There is a connection here to maker education – and back to what I said earlier about the necessity of community for the identity of a craftsperson to emerge. I think making can be a route to humanization, because maker education opens space for learners of all ages to find out about who they are, develop agency, and become more themselves.
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