Early Childhood in the Making

Agency by Design’s flexible framework for maker-centered learning, developed by the Origin Project team, has been applied across a variety of formal and informal settings to great effect. Nonetheless, there has been a perennial concern from early childhood educators about the applicability of this framework for young learners. At the same time, over the course of Agency by Design’s sustained work with early childhood educators, we have seen the power of the framework in various early childhood education contexts.

Since January 2018, researchers from Project Zero have been partnering with educators and administrators at the Victoria Educational Organisation’s kindergartens in Hong Kong to extend and expand upon the work of Agency by Design by engaging in a two-year pilot study entitled Agency by Design: Early Childhood in the Making. The goal of this collaborative inquiry has been to develop an early childhood-specific framework for maker-centered learning while also nurturing other generative cognitive dispositions and habits of mind at this critical stage of development.

The result of this exciting pilot study is the Maker-Centered Learning Playbook for Early Childhood Education. This playbook includes lessons learned from the study, pictures of practice featuring the teacher collaborators in Hong Kong, and a host of educator tools and resources. Through the work of the Agency by Design: Early Childhood in the Making project, we hope to extend the originalframework for maker-centered learning, and by doing so, expand the potential for early childhood maker-centered learning amongst young learners around the world.