Designing “Contexts for Tinkerability” With Undergraduates and Children Within the El Pueblo Mágico Social Design Experiment

Abstract

Abstract

“Making and Tinkering” links science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning (STEM) to the do-it-yourself “maker” movement, where people of all ages “create and share things in both the digital and physical world” (Resnick and Rosenbaum, 2013). This paper examines designing what Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) call “contexts for tinkerability” within the social design experiment of El Pueblo Mágico (EPM) – a design approach organized around a cultural historical view of learning and development. We argue that this theoretical perspective reorganizes normative approaches to STEM education through a hybrid approach that brings together concepts from cultural historical theory and from Making and Tinkering (M and T) in ways that are important to how theory is enacted in STEM practice.

Keywords: “Making and Tinkering”, cultural historical theory, nondominant communities, informal STEM

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Bibliography: Schwartz, Lisa H./DiGiacomo, Daniela/Gutiérrez, Kris D.: Designing “Contexts for Tinkerability”, IJREE, Vol. 3, Issue 1-2015, pp. 94-113. http://dx.doi.org/10.3224/ijree.v3i1.19583