Making & Design

Participatory Creativity

Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom presents a systems-based approach to examining creativity in education that aims to make participating in invention and innovation accessible to all students. Moving beyond the gifted-versus-ungifted debate present in many of today’s classrooms, the book’s inclusive framework situates creativity as a participatory and socially distributed process. The core principles of the book are that individuals are not creative, ideas are creative; and that there are multiple ways for a variety of individuals to participate in the development of creative ideas. This dynamic reframing of invention and innovation provides strategies for teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, and others who seek to develop a more equitable approach towards establishing creative learning experiences in various educational settings.

Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds

• Identifies a set of educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the focal concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design.
• Shares cutting edge research that provides evidence of the benefits of maker-centered learning for students and education as a whole.
• Presents a clear Project Zero-based framework for maker-centered teaching and learning
• Includes valuable educator resources that can be applied in a variety of design and maker-centered learning environments
• Describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity.

A surge of voices from government, industry, and education have argued that, in order to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning in various educational environments. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what that means, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere that learning takes place.

Maker-Centered Learning and the Development of Self: Preliminary Findings of AbD

Over the last two years we have simultaneously pursued three strands of work: 1) a review of pertinent literature; 2) interviews and site visits with leading maker educators; and 3) action research and concept development. We’re now commencing our third year of work. Our active data collection stage is over. We are well into an analysis of our results and are currently preparing several publications—including a book. However, in the put-it-out-there-and-tweak-as-you-go spirit of the maker movement, we offer this white paper as a preliminary glimpse at the emergent findings from our work, and as an open invitation to the maker educator community to continue to connect with us and share ideas.

The Maker Mind: Jen Ryan TEDx Talk