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Facilitators in informal spaces play an integral role in creating equitable and engaging STEM rich learning environments for youth. However, the complexity of facilitator’s practices is often undertheorized. Infrastructuring, or the process of dynamically designing with infrastructures (Karasti, 2014) gives us one lens to start to understand this complexity. Building on Azevedo’s lines of practice theory (2011), we aim to show the value in tracing infrastructuring work overtime in order to understand how facilitators’ preferences and constraints are shaping their practice. In this paper we present two traces, called lines of infrastructuring, that make visible the dynamic infrastructuring work of facilitators as they engage in a research practice partnership developing and implementing computing activities in their spaces. We argue that this analysis provides a new lens for understanding the practices of facilitators, and the realities of embedded infrastructures that can restrain the potential for equitable transformation in this work.
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Expanding and Focusing Infrastructuring Analysis for Informal STEM Education
In our efforts to build transformative informal STEM learning environments, we must consider how innovative educational practices and tools are adaptable, sustainable, and equitable. The lens of infrastructuring allows us to attend to the ways that people, practices, and objects already present in these environments can be leveraged and redesigned to support equitable learning outcomes. Through qualitative analysis of 16 facilitator interviews across three informal STEM organizations, we determined six types of infrastructure that support engagement with computational tinkering in informal learning environments: institutional routines and resources, social and facilitation practices, institutional and facilitator values, facilitator expertise, tools and materials, and physical space. We also point out some critical gaps or challenges within these categories that can serve as points for reflection and redesign. This work has implications for researchers, designers, and facilitators/managers who work in informal STEM settings and aim to engage learners with STEM in new ways.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2005764
- PAR ID:
- 10542607
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Society of the Learning Sciences
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 998 to 1001
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Montreal, ON, Canada
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2023.317400
