Making success: What does large-scale integration of making into a middle and high school look like?

Abstract

Making is a movement present in the United States which fosters creativity and invention through the creation and sharing of products. This case study of one Western Pennsylvania school district’s integration of Making into its lower and upper secondary schools shows how the investment in space and equipment, guided by visionary leadership, can bring about innovation. Our findings after year 1 of this 2-year project indicate that Elizabeth Forward School District has been successful in fostering an atmosphere where students and teachers are given permission to fail, thereby allowing for experimentation, exploration, and the integration of girls into this normally male-dominated field.

Keywords

Constructionism constructivism digital fabrication FabLabs gender barriers high school programs maker movement making middle school programs STEM

Introduction

Wanting to motivate students to come to school and provide more technical skills, administrators of Elizabeth Forward School District’s (EFSD), in Pennsylvania, United Sates, decided to bring more Making into their lower (middle school) and upper (high school) secondary schools. Making is a grassroots movement in the United States which taps into creativity and invention through the manufacture and sharing of digital and physical products. This article reports on the first year of a 2-year, National Science Foundation (NSF) funded case study of EFSD’s extensive integration of Making into its middle and high schools. During the 2016–2017 school year, we documented the extent of the integration of Making into the schools and how students and teachers utilize and experience the Maker initiative and spaces. We focused our data collection efforts on the following research question: What are the characteristics and capacities of EFSD’s integrated Maker Movement at the middle and high school, and which are critical for success? Our findings show that the visionary leadership of the school administration was a crucial capacity for this reform. We portray the success of Making integration into these schools through depictions of the innovations in spaces and equipment, the expansion of classes and curriculum, the students’ experiences, and the intentional inclusion of all students, particularly girls.

Background

In the United States, the Maker Movement is a self-declared grassroots movement that brings together designers, tinkerers, computer programmers, artisans, inventors, and creators of all types. Unique to this movement is the centrality of the use of technology to reach their individual and social aims, thus enabling communities to find solutions to their own problems (Mikhak et al., 2002) or as an agent of emancipation (Blikstein & Worsley, 2016). Halverson and Sheridan (2014) define the Maker Movement as ‘people who are engaged in the creative production of artifacts . . . and who find physical and digital forums to share their process and products with others’ (p. 496). Peppler (2010) defined the Maker Movement as a culture dedicated to ‘hands-on making and technological innovation’ (p. 1). As a grassroots cooperative movement, the Maker Movement provides the public with access to tools that would otherwise be cost and space prohibitive. Hatch (2014) asserts that the Maker Movement is a ‘democratic effort to make available the tools, materials, and processes necessary to design and make’ (p. 97).

Across the United States, the Maker Movement has become a popular educational initiative to improve and modernize education. Not surprisingly, the culture of the movement is about vitality and agility, responding to emerging needs and developing resources that can coalesce and support focused creativity toward production (Martin, 2015). While applauded for its focus on creativity and enhanced learning in informal education, it is less well defined as a way to engage students widely in schools (Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2014). Yet, increasingly in educational settings, the Maker Movement is taking hold of innovative and creative energies in formal education; promising increased interest and improved outcomes for students. Increasingly, funding and programs have been supporting the integration of Making spaces into formal education as a possible solution to the perceived inadequacy of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) instruction and outcomes in schools in the United States.

Integration of the Maker Movement into schools also holds promise in the area of instruction and learning. Education reform has increasingly focused on 21st-century skills, which are strongly connected to Making, and Fab Labs in particular (Blikstein, 2013; Martinez & Stager, 2013; Stewart, 2014). However, there is a dearth of research on how Making’s integration into formal education is affected by some fundamental differences between formal and informal education (Ryan, 2015). For example, some of the very characteristics that have made Maker Spaces successful are problematic in formal education settings, such as voluntary participation and a focus on process more than a graded product. Thus, Fab Labs and integration of the Maker Movement into schools is a prime opportunity to create learning environments that combine aspects of formal and informal education with varied disciplinary subject matter and 21st-century skills.

An early example of Making in formal education can be found in the state of Ohio, United States, at the MC2STEM High School. This was a large-scale undertaking in that the entire school focused on Making and STEM. Faculty and researchers with MC2STEM developed a curriculum that integrated Making with state standards. Evidence from MC2STEM has shown that Maker integration holds promise to help students improve in 21^st-century skills and traditional statewide standardized testing (Fab Foundation, 2015). This was one of the early influences on the EFSD administrators.

Smaller scale integration of the Maker Movement has also been effective through the creation of Fab Labs in schools. The Fab Foundation has provided a blueprint for integrating the Maker Movement into formal education through these Maker spaces which are ‘comprised of off-the-shelf, industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools, wrapped in open source software and programs written by researchers at MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms’ (Fab Foundation, 2015). Focusing on design and invention, Fab Labs provide students with means to ‘bring their ideas to life’. There are approximately 1260 volunteered registered Fab Labs around the world, where 173 Fab Labs are in the United States and 10 in the state of Pennsylvania (Fab Foundation, n.d.). Thus, Fab Labs provide an opportunity for informal educators to collaborate with schoolteachers and administrators, providing an opportunity to bridge the gap between these two sub-disciplines of education. Increasingly, research and policy makers have suggested a more collaborative approach to connect students to the array of educational opportunities available throughout their lives and the vibrant Maker network provides an existing avenue to do so.

EFSD has become a local groundbreaker in the integration of Making into a Kindergarten-12 grade (K-12) setting. The EFSD Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent were inspired to transform how students learned in EFSD when they attended an inspirational talk given by Don Marinelli, a local education and technology leader in technology and human-centered design (community partner interview) and former director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. This transformation was also influenced by conversations with another local leader in technology, entertainment, and education. His influence inspired their desire to motivate students to attend school through renovating and restructuring classrooms into innovative, colorful, and connected spaces that promote and support collaboration and creativity (community partner interview). The encouragement of these community partners motivated district leaders to transform their schools and inspire teachers to train students to work in the real world by focusing on human-centered design, designing someone else’s dream and not just your own. EFSD’s visionary leadership and space transformation helped to create a culture of creativity and innovation, with the freedom to try and fail for teachers and students. The resultant visionary leadership was a key factor in bringing about the large-scale introduction of Making into the middle and high schools.

Located in semi-rural Southwestern Pennsylvania, EFSD combines the Townships of Elizabeth (with a population of just over 13,000) and Forward (with a population of approximately 3400). EFSD is a fairly average district with a median household income of between US$51,000 (Forward) and US$59,000 (Elizabeth) (United States Census Bureau, 2016) and with 34.8 percent of its low-income students qualifying for free and reduced school lunch (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2015). These communities still echo the region’s blue-collar and rust belt history, yet have emerged as a leader of Making and innovation in K-12 education. In many ways, EFSD has returned to the historic Maker roots of mills and manufacturing of the region.

EFSD has embraced the Maker Movement, expanding key Maker tenets to include additional related innovations, such as gamification, 1:1 technology access, embodied learning, and educational technology integration. With approximately US$300,000 in grants and equivalent internal funding, EFSD substantially integrated the Maker Movement in its middle and high schools. EFSD created a Maker space in its middle school in 2013, and in its high school in 2014. More specifically these Maker spaces are 2 of only 10 registered Fab Labs in Pennsylvania (https://www.fablabs.io/labs). EFSD’s Fab Labs provide students with project-based learning that integrates art, technology education, and computer science along with other core subjects. They house digital fabrication technology, such as laser cutters, computer numerical control routers, 3D printers, and various 2D and 3D software applications, to provide educational activities reflecting current labor trends and 21st-century skills. Every year middle school students do a project, such as the Candy Bar Project in 2015–2016, where students designed a chocolate bar, created the mold, poured the chocolate, designed a company label, wrote a business plan, created company business cards, and produced a 30-second commercial; EFSD students gained firsthand experience on how to design, produce, and market an idea within today’s multimedia landscape (Keruskin, 2015). In 2016–2017 during our research, students repeated this project model with the design, production, and marketing of speaker boxes. These types of Making activities deeply engage students (see also Zollars, 2018).

Theoretical foundations of making in education

The lens that shapes our view of Making in EFSD is based on experiential, constructivist, and constructionist learning theory. Dewey, Piaget, and Papert provide us with a framework for understanding how Making has entered into formal education (Blikstein, 2013). Dewey (1902) explained that the role of a teacher is most often to present ‘subject-matter as it stands’ (p.31). Thus, students are asked to learn subject matter that has been arranged and organized by someone else and for which there is ‘no organic connection with what [they] have seen and felt and loved . . . [and] no craving, no need, no demand’ (p. 31). Such learning environments are contrived, synthetic, and rarely driven by students’ needs or desires. Piaget’s (1964) theory of constructivism further contributes to our understanding of the importance of experience to education by describing how physical and mental actions/operations are assimilated into a person’s mental structure to create knowledge.

Papert takes Dewey and Piaget one step further into a framework known as ‘constructionism’ (Papert, 1991). The theoretical foundation of our work in Making at EFSD, therefore, is Papert’s constructionist theory of learning. Constructionism is the expansion of Piaget’s constructivist learning theory (Piaget, 1964), where the learning is understood as the process of ‘building knowledge structures’, rather than a transmission of pre-existing knowledge. Papert included the need for student activities with ‘manipulative materials’ to construct knowledge. He also incorporated the need to construct a shareable ‘public entity’, within a context with which the learner is consciously engaged (Papert, 1980, 1991) This learning theory extends beyond earlier ideas of ‘hands-on’ learning or catchy versions of ‘learning-by-making’. It implies an epistemological way of knowing that demands a learning environment that drives activities by ‘enterprise and initiative’ (Papert, 1991), where computers–the media most commonly associated with making and Papert’s work–are only a choice, a ‘carrier’, to make a ‘megachange’ to education: to use the technology (computers and robotics kits as medium not cause) ‘for the achievement of a less technical form of education’ (Papert, 1991, p. 18).

Methods

During the 2016–2017 school year, we set forth to answer the research question: What are the characteristics and capacities of EFSD’s integrated Maker Movement at the middle (grades 6–8, students age 12–14) and high school (grades 9–12, ages 15–18), and which are critical for success? We used a case study methodology with purposeful sampling (Merriam, 2009). Purposeful sampling allowed the researchers to explore this unique example of successful integration of Making. Following the recommendations of Yin (2009), we included four data sources: semi-structured interviews and focus groups, classroom observations, documentation of curriculum and programs, and inventories of the spaces and equipment. From this substantial data set, we were able to more fully understand and articulate the characteristics of EFSD’s integration of Making at its middle and high school: the renovation of the physical spaces and addition of equipment, the reorganization and expansion of courses and curricula, the experience of students, and the intentional inclusion of all students, particularly girls.

We used three methods to collect data for this research. Our first method was documentation of the Making spaces and curriculum at the EF middle and high school. For this effort, we spent time photographing 36 Making spaces and inventorying equipment used in Making and related classes. We then collected the programs of study for both the middle and high schools to review the extent of Making activities and spaces were used in classes, departments, and the schools overall. Next, we conducted 41 observations of Making classes, 18 at the middle school and 23 at the high school, to gain an understanding of the interaction between teachers and students, and structure in Making classes. Finally, we conducted interviews and focus groups to understand stakeholders’ experiences with the integration of Making. Those interviewed included the district superintendent, assistant superintendent, both the middle and high school principal, 15 Making teachers (4 at the middle school and 9 at the high school), and 4 key community partners named by EFSD administrators as inspiring, shaping, and their vision of Making in schools. For students, we conducted 12 focus groups, 3 at the middle school and 9 at the high school (see Table 1 for detailed summary of data collection).

Table 1.

Summary of data collection activities.

Community Interviews (n = 4)					Four EFSD Administrator Interviews (n = 4)
Local grant-maker and making support organization who provided funding and support					Superintendent
Local businessman whose presentation inspired EFSD leadership					Asst. superintendent
Local professor who inspired EFSD to transform spaces					HS principal
Making pioneers at the local children’s museum					MS principal
Teacher interviews (n = 15)	Class(es) observed (n = 41)					Students focus groups (n = 13)
Teacher interviews (n = 15)	1	2	3	4	Total	Students focus groups (n = 13)
MS T-1	Dream factory art	Art 6	Art 7	Art 8	4	Dream factory frt
MS T-2	Dream factory computers	Computers 6	Computers 7	Computers 8	4	Dream factory computers
MS T-3	Dream factory tech ed	Tech Ed 6	Tech Ed 7	Tech Ed 8	4	Dream factory tech ed
MS T-4	Threads n/a–lunch bunch	Foods 8	Fam. & Con. Sci. 6	Fam. & Con. Sci. 7	4
MS T-5	Earth & space science 7 (Energy Lab)				1
MS T-6	Social studies 7 (Small Lab)				1
HS T-1	Graphic technologies	Girls maker lab	Digital Media	3D Modeling	4	Graphic Tech. 2	Girls maker lab
HS T-2	(ETA) GameMaker Prog I	(ETA) Gaming internship	Java/C ++ Prog./AP Computer Science	Python Prog.	4	Internship
HS T-3	Manufacturing	Woodworking II	Constr. & Bldg. Proc.		3	Manufacturing
HS T-4	Intro to Eng. & Des.	Architectural drawing	CAD II	Principles of Engineering	4	Intro to engineering & design
HS T-5	(ETA) Evolution of games	(ETA) Game design	(ETA) Screenwriting		3	(ETA) Game design
HS T-6	ElizaBYTE Academy				1	ElizaBYTE
HS T-7	Media internship	Media center			2	Media internship
HS T-8	Multi-media productions				1	Multi-media productions
HS T-9	Robotics				1	Robotics

EFSD: Elizabeth Forward School District; MS: middle school; HS: high school.

Our qualitative data analysis, using the Dedoose qualitative software version 7.6.6, followed the deductive approach (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014), and had 3 main cycles. First, based on a representative sample of transcribed interviews and focus groups, we identified and coded answers to our research question, then grouped codes into emergent themes (Saldaña, 2009). An early draft of our codebook was developed to initiate the second phase of the data analysis. In this phase, while already having some themes identified, newly emerged codes were added and others refined through the creation of subcategories, bringing more details and depth to the analysis. Some codes, similar in meaning, were aggregated forming new codes. As this research is purely descriptive, our third pass of analysis involved re-organizing the coded data to ‘see how far they fit or fail to fit’ (Hartley, 1994) each research question.

Findings

One of the primary goals of EFSD was to move beyond the industrial age of learning to the exploration of the unconventional learning environments found through Making. EFSD created spaces for Making, purchased the equipment necessary for Making, and introduced courses and content into the curriculum to inspire Making. These innovations shifted the experiences of students from content driven to interest driven learning. Therefore, we will explain these main characteristics of EFSD’s innovation in Making in the following sections: (1) innovative spaces and equipment, (2) expanded classes and curriculum, (3) shifts in student experience of school and (4) the intentional inclusion of all students, particularly girls.

Innovative spaces and equipment: middle school

The first steps in the integration of Making included the renovation of spaces and purchase of equipment at the Middle School. EFSD consulted with Fab Lab experts worldwide and in 2013 created a learning space in one wing of their middle school to house three areas of learning: art, computer science, and technology education. This learning space became EF’s Fab Lab called the DREAM Factory. The DREAM Factory combines art, technology education and computer science. It is a series of contiguous spaces and a set of linked courses that include computer programming, robotics, instruction in 2D and 3D software with use of a laser cutter, computer numerical control (CNC) router and 3D printers, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, animation, 3D modeling and 3D scanning.

The Art Studio in the DREAM Factory space includes, among other equipment, three pottery wheels and a kiln, a Making station with a 3D printer and a vinyl cutter, and sewing machines. The DREAM Factory Computer Lab includes a complement of 28 iMac computers, a 3D printer, a green screen room, and the equipment necessary to support robotics (Figure 1). The Tech Ed DREAM Factory physical space is divided into two primary areas: first, what would traditionally be considered a ‘shop’ area with six large work stations on one side of the classroom and machinery on the other side of the classroom and second, a separate, smaller design room designated as a planning space allows students to work online to design and modify projects on one of three computer screens and to laser engrave and to 3D print.

Figure 1.

Diagram of DREAM factory computer lab.

In addition to the three original areas of the DREAM Factory created, EFSD later added three new learning spaces. These include a Small Lab where all teachers are asked to bring their students two times per year; an Energy Lab in which students are exposed to the world of energy through interactive, problem-solving projects; and, an iCreate Studio (Media Center) that provides learning opportunities and technology for audio and video creation.

The Small Lab is an interactive classroom that provides a projection from four corner-mounted cameras onto the whole surface area of the floor. A PC station in the corner of the room runs the various learning games projected on a raised touch-sensitive floor similar in function to an interactive white board. Students learn through physical interaction with the projections on the floor space. The Energy Lab is a space that includes several stations showcasing interactive learning modules centered around the theme of energy use and design. Examples include a wind turbine design studio, a solar panel distribution studio, a sample extraction came for fossil fuel drilling, an International Space Station viewer among others. The iCreate Studio includes a One Button Studio designed for complex audio and video creations supported by technology to facilitate easy video recording and editing, sound mixing, and lighting design.

Innovative spaces and equipment: high school

Rooms and spaces at the high school received a similar amount of renovations. In the district’s first Making renovation project, the high school’s traditional library was transformed into a digital media center housing a professional grade video production room, an audio studio, a video game area, a performance space, digital projectors, and large high definition monitors. The Technology Education suite was redesigned to contain a Fab Lab with group seating, digital printers, and a laser engraver (Figure 2). In addition to the traditional wood shop space and equipment, a connected room was renovated to house two industrial CNC Routers capable of working with 4x8 sheets of material. The Engineering Design Lab contains more than 20 computer stations running various engineering software and a workshop area with six 3-D printers. The Graphic Design Studio includes 20 iMac stations, an industrial vinyl printer, multiple desktop vinyl printers, sewing machines, numerous type of heat presses, and a 5-station commercial screen printing press. Finally, the Entertainment Technology Room is a futuristic space with multiple projection screens and divided areas with unique seating designed to spark creativity.

Figure 2.

Diagram of high school Fab Lab.

Expansion of the classes and curriculum

EFSD not only created the DREAM Factory at the Middle School (thereby creating a unique Making suite of class offerings), but also increased the Maker course offerings at the High School. In 2016–2017, four departments were primarily involved in various forms of Making at Elizabeth Forward High School (EFHS): Business, Computer and Information Technology; Entertainment Technology Academy; Technology Education; and Science. Two classes, multimedia productions, and multimedia internship are not categorized under an academic department but rather fall under the purview of the media center and yearbook/journalism programs. These are housed in the Media Center and Chorus Room/Music department.

In the Business, Computer and Information Technology Department, there are six Making courses including the basic introduction to Making (with computer technologies), ElizaByte Academy, which is a required course for all freshmen. From that basis, students can go on to take courses such as Python Programming, Game Design, and others all the way to AP Computer Science: Java/C ++ Programming. The Entertainment Technology Academy offers eight Making courses, some of which overlapping with Computer Science courses such as The Evolution of Games, GameMaker Programming I, 3D Modeling and the Gaming Internship. In addition, students can take Screenwriting in the Entertainment Technology Academy, which does not fit into the traditional idea of Making but aids in students’ game design.

The more traditionally thought of ‘Making’ is done in the Technology Education Department, with a total of 13 courses. These include classes such as Woodworking I and II, Manufacturing, Construction and Building Processes, Maker Lab/Girls’ Maker Lab, Intro to Engineering and Design, Principles of Engineering, CAD 2, Architectural Drawing, but also Graphic Technologies, and Digital Media. In addition, in the Science Department there are two courses that focus on robotics: Warrior Bots I and Warrior Bots II.

Student experience

EFSD’s Middle School DREAM Factory’s Eighth-Grade Technology Education rotation is an ideal exemplar of the success of the integration of Making for all students. The students in the observed 6-week rotation utilized the skills they developed from previous learning from the other two 6-week rotation courses of art and computers along with skills learned previously in other related courses from the sixth and seventh grades. This rotation required the student groups to design and create laser-engraved business cards, develop a computer- generated 3D-design concept of a speaker box with accurate measurements, transform the computer- generated concept into a cardboard prototype, and finally, create the finished product out of the selected materials (usually wood). The skills necessary to complete the project include, but are not limited to, computer design software skills, mathematic calculation and geometry skills, art and design skills, and technology skills associated with laser engraving and woodworking.

One element that contributed to the Making’s success in this school is the high prevalence of a balance of the skills the students possess to the challenges to which they are presented. This balance appeared to be essential for other evidence of meaningful engagement to occur. In the words of the teacher when asked about the control and direction of the learning process:

I talk to the [student] group leader. I’ll say that you have to start assigning tasks to everyone in your group. [It] teaches them leadership responsibilities – delegating authority. But – not with the thumb pressed down on them, controlling them . . . If they get frustrated, I help them out. I help them work through it is all . . . They [the students] are engaged. They are actively doing the work. They are taking the initiative. They are having fun.

The teacher in this classroom guided the students with a vigilance to keep that balance in play throughout each step of the learning process.

Students in this study reported that they place a high value on having some control over what and how they learn, and this learning situation was a positive departure for them from traditional classrooms. These students valued being able to use skills learned in other classrooms and subjects. They also appreciated the flexibility to tailor their own learning, to have a voice in the pacing of the learning process, and to have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers. In the words of the students:

‘The reason I like to take DREAM Factory is because it is fun and you get to work with others and make things that you maybe have not made before’. ‘I think it is the team factor’. ‘We get to pick what we want to do. We have more control. We just have more flexibility’. ‘You can see an overall outcome, like something to work towards that actually comes to life’. ‘It’s fun!’

The cohort collectively expressed that what they like about this class compared to other classes is that they get to learn to make something that is real and that they have fun doing it.

The classes that epitomize Making at the high school are the Maker Labs. Although there are no prerequisites, these classes generally attract students who have taken some basic introductory classes in Making, want to do more advanced work, and/or who have projects they want to create more independently. The observations done in the high school Girls’ Maker Lab showed similar student experiences as those described for the middle schoolers discussed above. For example, class observations showed that the teacher’s organization and flexibility in this class allows students to have the freedom to push boundaries of their skills without worry about failing that both the teacher and students enjoy. As the Girls’ Maker Lab Teacher explained,

. . . people think they need to be crazy laser engrave experts, and you really don’t – you really just need to understand how it works, and kinda be confident . . . .don’t be afraid to learn right alongside with the kids. You know . . . the teacher feels like they have to know more than the students, and in this case, you just have to let that go.

Although the teacher is present and provides instruction and support, the class is intended to be a self-guided experience. She explains,

It’s a lot more student-centered. Now, where I was killing myself to pre-plan and to have handouts, and instructions, and how-to’s, you know, I’m putting that all on them. ‘If you want to make it . . . I’ll help . . . but you have to figure it out’. And then I let them network with each other. Once one figures it out, there’s no harm in sharing it with somebody else . . . They’re able to network with each other, and kinda create their own little instruction manuals for things.

This approach has resulted in the students being free to take risks and fail and thereby gain confidence. The teacher asserts,

You know, when I tell them how to do it, and they hit the button, and we’re all doing the same thing, they don’t have as much pride in it. If they thought of it, they created it, they designed it, they figured out how to make it, you know, they really have so much more pride. And they learn so much more along the way.

The students agree.

Inclusion of all students

EFSD has set up its curriculum so that every student has some experience of Making at both the middle school and the high school levels. EFSD approached Making in their middle school with a curriculum that would first prepare the students with foundational skills in the sixth and seventh grades. The students in eighth grade complete a 6-week rotation in each of the three areas of art, computer coding, and technology education to create guided projects. The eighth-grade courses take students through the innovation process from idea conceptualization to creation of a design, followed by a prototype, and finally, to product completion. At the high school level, students have more choice but the ElizaByte Academy is the course that every student takes. This is a basic introduction to creativity, technology, and computational thinking. After the ElizaByte Academy course, students can choose to take additional Making classes or not.

There has been a dominance of white males involved in the Making Movement (Blikstein, 2013), as with STEM in general (Grossman & Porche, 2014). EFSD experiences a similar trend in its high school Making classes, enrollment is predominantly male. In the 2014–2015 school year, EFHS rolled out the first ever Maker Lab and enrollment was 99 percent male. This trend was common to the Making classes. In fact, women are underrepresented in STEM careers and girls are underrepresented in STEM education programs, especially engineering and physics (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010; Milgram, 2011). This underrepresentation can stem from the implicit bias and stereotypes encountered in girls’ early educational experiences that lead them to decide that STEM studies and careers are not for them. Hill et al. (2010) assert, ‘girls’ achievements and interest in math and science are shaped by the environment around them (p. 27)’.

Therefore, the district looked for a way to encourage female enrollment and decided to offer an all-girl Maker Lab class beginning in the 2015–2016 school year. The goal was to offer a safer environment to allow the girls to be comfortable learning the equipment and exploring projects of their choice (personal communication with High School Making teacher). The Girls Maker Lab attracted female students who were hesitant to take the co-ed class. In the voice of one student, ‘I guess the reason I haven’t really taken anything like this until this year is because I knew this was an all-girls class, and I kind of didn’t want to be in a woodshop class with all the boys in our school, because they’re the boys in our school, and . . . ’ [laughter and agreement] ‘and I didn’t want to sit there and make gun cabinets, and little, like, cord-holders for my garage’. The all-girl class has two simultaneous tracks progressing all year: one is a whole-class, year-long project and the other is a series of small projects the girls choose for themselves. In the 2016–2017 school year, the whole-class project was to construct an Ikea grow room, which was then donated to the elementary school. One example of the types of individual projects the girls chose was a custom-built corner vanity to fit one student’s small bedroom space.

One participant explained, ‘I feel like (the class) gives girls confidence’. Having a Girls’ Maker Lab provides a safe space for young women to explore Making that they might not otherwise have tried due to the gender stereotypes and perceptions of their male counterparts. Their impressions are confirmed by participation in the other Making classes, which was observed to be predominantly male. Another student summed up her experience of the single gender class by saying, ‘Like you’ll make all this cool stuff, and guys will just be like, ‘you made that? You’re a girl, how’d you do that?’’.

Grossman and Porche (2014) explain how the stereotypes and microaggressions that girls experience are a large part of why they do not enter into STEM courses. In addition, Hill et al. (2010) claim that ‘girls and women may be especially vulnerable to losing confidence in STEM areas (p. 22)’. Providing alternative narratives and support to counter microaggressions and stereotypes which denigrate girls’ STEM abilities is crucial. Providing opportunities for girls to experience STEM in an environment where their enjoyment and confidence can be fostered might be one key to increasing girls’ persistence in interest in STEM (Hill et al., 2010). EFSD is therefore attracting girls to STEM through their concerted effort to recruit girls by having a female role-model teaching the girls-only course. Finally, aligning with the educational foundations of Making (Dewey, 1902; Papert, 1991; Piaget, 1964), EFHS’ Girls’ Maker Class allows students to drive their experience, activities, and products created and includes STEM activities that are more appealing to girls. As suggested by Milgram (2011), a carpentry class where girls build a jewelry box, can encourage female students’ enrollment.

Discussion

The main findings from year 1 of our data collection show that the characteristics of this reform are innovations in: equipment and space, classes and curriculum, student experience, and the intentional inclusion of all students. The spark that lit this initiative happened when the superintendent and assistant superintendent attended a community partner’s presentation which inspired them to transform how students were learning in EFSD. This morphed into a desire to motivate students to come to school by creating innovative, colorful spaces; painting the walls, structuring the spaces so that there is collaboration, and so on. Community partners also inspired EFSD to educate students for work in the real world; focusing on human-centered design, which is designing someone else’s dream and not your own.

The leadership then sought out various examples of Making across the country and grants to support their purchases of equipment, renovation of spaces, and further training of their staff. This created a vision that also encouraged individualized professional development opportunities for staff, permitting each teacher to try new and innovative things without fear of repercussions for failure. With these capacities present, the staff and administrators worked to develop and offer new courses, content, and pedagogy.

The atmosphere of being free to fail that was created for teachers, was in turn passed down to students in their Making experiences (Joplin, 1981). This was observed in classes where the students had more autonomy in their project choices and skill building. The classes we observed also revealed more focus on process than on product in assessment – so if a student’s project is not completed in the 9-week term or something did not ‘work’ the grade would not automatically be an ‘F’ – or failure.

These findings support our constructionist theoretical foundation. Papert (1991)’s epistemological view suggests that the role of the teachers would change, from plain instruction to ‘guide students . . . give encouragement’ (p.19). The teachers that embraced Making clearly embody that change thus creating an overall culture of creativity and innovation for both teachers and students.

Our research shows how collaborations with organizations normally found outside of the K-12 environment can help a more diverse constituency gain access, especially women and potentially other underrepresented groups that have been less present in the Maker Movement. Next, our research provides an example of how to change physical space and pedagogical culture to implement similar efforts in other schools. Finally, our research sheds light on how visionary leadership’s approach to reform can take root, informing other districts looking to revitalize their workforce through graduates prepared with 21st-century skills.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by a United States National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers, Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (ITEST-EAGER) Grant Number: Award # 1623431.

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