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This study builds on posthumanist and new materialist orientations to examine the role of material properties and the gendered identity texts of educational tools as active agents in STEM learning. Over 200 youth, ages 5–15, were randomly assigned to 90-minute introductions to one of five commercial circuitry toolkits. Youth took a pre- and post-assessment; we analyzed results using quantitative tests of significance. We used an established sorting task to gather youth perspectives of the tools as identity texts through design markers of gendered identities within the toolkits. We examined the relationship between learning outcomes and the gendered design components of the toolkits. Toolkits that privilege feminine or artistic elements significantly impacted learning more than traditional toolkits used in schools, which showed little to no significant learning gains. We relate this to the inextricability of materiality and the gendered identities of these tools and materials. This study shows how arts-based or feminine-coded tools can be more effective for teaching and learning, serving as a counter to common resistance to adopting such tools and materials for STEM learning. We outline design implications for toolkits and educational experiences to disrupt stagnant social, cultural, and historical norms in STEM education. We would like to thank the participants for their generous participation in this work, as well as our partner schools and organizations who helped make this possible. We would also like to thank members of the Creativity Labs—past and present—who helped to serve as thought partners and sounding boards at various points in the process. 

Abstract This exploratory study compares how young people (ages 15–16) learn circuitry concepts and layout design principles important to electrical engineering using one of two educational circuitry toolkits: paper circuits and traditional solderless breadboards. Paper-based prototyping kits are representative of a trend that incorporates new materials and approaches to integrating arts into traditional STEM disciplines. Extending prior research on how non-traditional toolkits enhance learning of electrical engineering outcomes, including basic circuitry concepts (i.e., current flow, polarity, and connections), this study examines the material affordances and design choices of the kits that contribute to youth’s understanding of more advanced circuitry layout design principles, including space allocation, placement of electronic components, and routing. Results indicate that paper circuits better afford the learning of layout design principles for printed circuit boards (PCBs) with large effect sizes. This study illuminates how the materials of educational toolkits uniquely solicit body- and material-syntonic patterns of activity, and thus differentially engage learners’ powerful ideas around circuitry and design principles. This investigation encourages careful consideration of the material affordances of some toolkits over others for learning purposes. 

There is tremendous excitement around makerspaces for deepening and enriching curricula across subjects, as well as engaging traditionally marginalized learners in new ways. To address the lack of translation of maker education projects to mathematics learning, we propose that educators aspire to create a “Mathland” when designing maker educational activities. Mathlands are environments envisioned by Seymour Papert where mathematics are learned alongside ways of doing mathematics in self-selected contexts, leading to an epistemology and natural language of mathematics that pervades all experiences. To imagine a Mathland where women’s participation in mathematics is lifelong and lifewide, we explore traditionally female-dominated fiber crafts where long-term engagement, mathematics, and heritage intersect. As part of a longitudinal embedded multi-year ethnographic study, we conducted cohort analyses as well as grounded, iterative, and thematic coding of semi-structured interview data, augmented with crafting artifacts from 65 adult fiber crafters. Using qualitative analytical techniques, we asked: How does math occur in craft? How do crafters observe the intersection between math and craft in process? Fiber crafts were found to present a “Mathland,” a lifelong context for immersive math engagement. We present crafters’ math insights in the craft, as well as multiple aspects of the crafts and surrounding communities that supported the crafters in sustaining their engagement with mathematics throughout their lifetime. This study has implications for the design of inclusive and lifelong maker educational environments for mathematics learning. 

Global protests and civil unrest in 2020 has renewed the world’s interest in addressing injustice due to structural racism and oppression toward Black and Latinx people in all aspects of society, including computing. In this article, we argue that to address and repair the harm created by institutions, policies, and practices that have systematically excluded Black and Latina girls from computer science, an intersectional, transformative justice approach must be taken. Leveraging testimonial authority, we share our past 8 years of experience designing, implementing, and studying Digital Youth Divas, a programmatic and systemic approach to encouraging middle school Black and Latina girls to participate in STEM. Specifically, we propose three principles to counter structural racism and oppression embedded in society and computing education: computing education must (1) address local histories of injustice by engaging community members; (2) counter negative stereotypes perpetuated in computer science by creating inclusive safe spaces and counter-narratives; and (3) build sustainable, computational capacity in communities. To illustrate each principle, we provide specific examples of the harm created by racist policies and systems and their effect on a specific community. We then describe our attempt to create counter structures and the subsequent outcomes for the girls, their families, and the community. This work contributes a framework for STEM and computing educators to integrate transformative justice as a method of repairing the harm that both society and the field of computing has and continues to cause Black and Latinx communities. We charge policy makers, educators, researchers, and community leaders to examine histories of oppression in their communities and to adopt holistic, transformative approaches that counter structural oppression at the individual and system level. 

A growing subset of the learning sciences centers how relationality supports meaningful sense-making. Some of this work focuses specifically on friendships, a relational form in which participants share a historical, emotional, social, and cultural intersubjectivity. We wish to re-focus this research in the learning sciences by exploring three kinds of friendships within the field (researcher-researcher, researcher-collaborator, and participant-participant) to understand how these relational forms emerged and expanded our thinking and ways of being. We argue politicized trust and ethical vulnerability are important components of learning in friendships. We offer potential implications for the learning sciences to further our goals of developing theoretically validated, politically explicit, ethically laden theories and designs of learning.