Makerspaces in the Making: Reconfiguring Cultures of Facilitation across the Kindergarten and the Science Museum

Abstract

This chapter explores the issue of agency as a central feature of makerspaces, and the challenges and opportunities that may emerge in that regard when such spaces are designed targeting young learners. Educational research tends to emphasize how makerspaces offer engaging and interesting activities that children find motivating. In studies investigating makerspaces, the idea of disruption has been explored with regard to the social materiality of given technologies such as electronic textiles With regard to agency and creativity, researchers have been concerned with the development of models that enable us to identify the learning happening in makerspaces. The institutional level involves an interest in how institutional practices, where particular historically developed institutional roles and objectives are made relevant, impact on children’s creative making in the museum. The cultural-historical perspective taken has methodological implications that are grounded in the view that one way to understand a social practice is by changing it.