Search for: All records

Educators are often described as practitioners and can be subject to deficit-oriented characterizations that position their work as focused on the passive dissemination of knowledge. This pictorial argues that educators are designers, and their curation of learning environments and experiences constitutes an underappreciated and complex design practice. Further, the design work that educators engage in is significant and consequential as it can define or reimagine who participates and what is valued in educational spaces – playing an important role in creating more equitable educational outcomes. In this pictorial, we leverage photos captured and curated by educators of their learning environments in library makerspaces and youth- serving technology centers to make their unseen design work and impact visible. Beyond making educators’ expertise more visible, this pictorial also offers design considerations for designers of technologies, materials, and experiences that may be situated in educational environments. 

PurposeRelatively few studies have examined the perspectives of informal learning facilitators who play key roles in cultivating an equitable learning environment for nondominant youth and families in making and tinkering spaces. This study aims to foreground the perspectives of facilitators and highlight the complexities and tensions that influence their equity work. Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with facilitators of making and tinkering spaces across three informal learning organizations: a museum, a public library system and a network of community technology centers. This study then used a framework that examined equity along dimensions of access to what, for whom, based on whose values and toward what ends to analyze both the explicit and implicit conceptions of equity that surfaced in these interviews. FindingsAcross organizations, this study identified similarities and differences in facilitators’ conceptualizations of equity that were influenced by their different contexts and had implications for practice at each organization. Highlighting the complexity of enacting equity in practice, this study found moments when dimensions of equity came together in resonant ways, while other moments showed how dimensions can be in tension with each other. Practical implicationsThe complexity that facilitators must navigate to enact equity in their practice emphasizes the need for professional development and support for facilitators to deepen their conceptions and practices around equity beyond access – not just skill building in making and tinkering. Originality/valueThis study recognizes the important role that facilitators play in enabling equity-oriented participation in making and tinkering spaces and contributes the “on the ground” perspectives of facilitators to highlight the complexity and tensions of enacting equity in practice. 

There is growing interest in implementing computational resources, technologies, and experiences in informal learning environments like museums, makerspaces, libraries, and community centers. In this paper, we highlight six shared challenges facilitators in three different informal learning contexts encountered in designing and implementing computational activities for their participants. These challenges touch on facilitators’ identities, the relevance of existing materials, infrastructural constraints, visitors’ perceptions of computational tools, issues of equity, and technical challenges.