Maker pedagogy and science teacher education

We are pleased to announced the first publication from our research program, published in a special issue of the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies. The piece is conceptual and considers some of the opportunities and challenges to adopting what we have defined as maker pedagogy in science education.

We are committed to publishing a portion of our work in open access format and are pleased to state that the article is freely available at:

http://www.jcacs.com/#!v13-1-bullocksastor/cut

The abstract:

Making is a process that people engage in to design, create, and develop things that are of value and use to them personally or for their community. The recent popular (and sometimes commercial) Maker Movement is rooted in making and traces its lineage from a variety of historical precedents, including ancient traditions of arts and crafts fairs, tinkering and inventing using analog technologies, and hacking and programing with digital technologies. So-called “Maker Spaces” often function as co-ops that allow people to come together to build things, share expensive tools, and learn skills from one another. In this article, we will use the maker movement as a catalyst to reveal both some perennial challenges of and potential ways forward for curriculum studies of science and technology teacher education. In particular, we suggest that maker pedagogy, an approach to working with teacher candidates drawing from principles in the maker movement represents a potentially useful way forward in engaging teacher candidates in thinking about curriculum and working with students.

Citation Information:

Bullock, S. M., & Sator, A. J. (2015). Maker pedagogy and science teacher education. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 13(1), 61–87.