Supporting Learning in Museum Makerspaces: A National Framework

ABSTRACT

In recent years, many museums across the country have established or invested resources to implement maker programs or makerspaces for their visitors. These programs and spaces serve a variety of organizational and/or programmatic goals, but fundamentally they serve as sites of learning. Yet, despite these growing efforts, the field knows relatively little about how to support learning within these spaces. This paper presents a framework to inform the design and organization of maker programs and spaces. This framework was developed through a process of visiting makerspaces, interviewing maker educators and researchers and receiving feedback through a series of workshops. The framework consists of three elements: purpose, people, and pieces and parts. By engaging in these elements, we claim that museums can foster the conditions for learning to unfold within maker-based learning experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Makerspace
• learning
• framework
• museum
• design

Acknowledgements

Throughout its development, the project has benefited from the contributions of many organizations and individuals, including a team of thought partners providing ongoing feedback. These thought partners included: Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich from the Tinkering Studio in the Exploratorium, Andrea Saenz from the Chicago Community Trust (formerly Chicago Public Library), Adam Rogers from North Carolina State University Libraries and Lisa Regalla from the Bay Area Discovery Museum (formerly from Maker Ed). In addition, at various points in the project, over 100 museum and library practitioners from over 50 organizations contributed their insight and feedback through convenings and regional workshops we carried out to test the framework and its accompanying tools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Peter S. Wardrip is Assistant Professor of STEAM Education at the University of Wisconsin. Prior to Wisconsin, he was a learning scientist at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on informal learning, formal/informal collaborations, teacher learning and learning through making and tinkering.

Lisa Brahms, PhD, is the Director of Education at Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont. Previously, Lisa served as the Director of Learning and Research at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, as well as a researcher with the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments (UPCLOSE). As a leader in the design, development and study of makerspaces to support learning, Lisa’s research considers the design and facilitation of learning experiences for meaningful participation in creative processes.

Notes

1 Brahms and Wardrip, “Making with Young Learners.”

2 Honey and Kanter, Design, Make, Play; Halverson and Sheridan, “The Maker Movement in Education.”

3 Wilkinson and Petrich, The Art of Tinkering.

4 Blikstein, Martinez, and Pang, Meaningful Making.

5 Gutwill, Hido, and Sindorf, “Research to Practice”; Wardrip and Brahms, “Learning Practices of Making”; Brahms and Wardrip, “The Learning Practices of Making.”

6 Suri, “Purposeful Sampling in Qualitative Research Synthesis.”

7 Creswell and Miller, “Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.