Critical theory of maker education

Last updated March 22, 2019

Critical theory of maker education asserts that maker education curriculum and pedagogy necessarily aligns itself with the greater educational imperative (as described in the Critical Pedagogy Primer ) that "questions of democracy and justice cannot be separated from the most fundamental features of teaching and learning" (p. 5).^[1] Foundational Critical Theorists like Paulo Freire in his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , stressed the need for a new relationship between teacher, student, and school, that would cultivate in students radical liberation from the political injustices that oppress them. Maker education is another avenue by which radical liberation is possible.

Maker education closely associated with STEM learning, is an approach to problem-based and project-based learning that relies upon hands-on, often collaborative, learning experiences as a method for solving authentic problems. People who participate in making often call themselves "makers" of the maker movement and develop their projects in makerspaces, or development studios which emphasize prototyping and the repurposing of found objects in service of creating new inventions or innovations. Culturally, makerspaces, both inside and outside of schools, are associated with collaboration and the free flow of ideas. In schools, maker education stresses the importance of learner-driven experience, interdisciplinary learning, peer-to-peer teaching, iteration, and the notion of "failing forward", or the idea that mistake-based learning is crucial to the learning process and eventual success of a project.

Critical Pedagogy Primer is a book by Joe L. Kincheloe published by Peter Lang. Like other "primers" published by Peter Lang, it is an introductory text on the topic of critical pedagogy aimed at a wider audience with its use of more accessible language. The book has wide margins suitable for reader annotations, and many terms and their definitions are included in these margins for accessibility.

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. He is best known for his influential work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.

Scholars Shirin Vossoughi and Paula K. Hooper of Northwestern University, and Meg Escude of Exploratorium, offer an in-depth look at the ways in which maker education reinforces educational inequality by perceiving learners from backgrounds that are not "grounded in gendered, white, middle-class cultural practices" through the deficit lens of the culture of poverty. Not only do Vossoughi, Hooper, and Escude critique maker education as it is currently practiced, they also offer proposed solutions for "equity-oriented design" of maker experiences which include, "critical analyses on educational injustice, historicized approaches to making as cross-cultural activity, explicit attention to pedagogy, and inquiry into the sociopolitical values and purposes of making".

Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university based in Evanston, Illinois, United States, with other campuses located in Chicago and Doha, Qatar, and academic programs and facilities in Miami, Florida; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, California. Along with its undergraduate programs, Northwestern is known for its Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Feinberg School of Medicine, Bienen School of Music, Medill School of Journalism, and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco that allows visitors to explore the world through science, art, and human perception. Its mission is to create inquiry-based experiences that transform learning worldwide. It has been described by the New York Times as the most important science museum to have opened since the mid-20th century, an achievement attributed to "the nature of its exhibits, its wide-ranging influence and its sophisticated teacher training program". Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory nature of its exhibits and its self-identification as a center for informal learning has led to it being cited as the prototype for participatory museums around the world.

Educational inequality is the unequal distribution of academic resources, including but not limited to; school funding, qualified and experienced teachers, books, and technologies to socially excluded communities. These communities tend to be historically disadvantaged and oppressed. More times than not, individuals belonging to these marginalized groups are also denied access to the schools with abundant resources. Inequality leads to major differences in the educational success or efficiency of these individuals and ultimately suppresses social and economic mobility. See Statistic sections for more information.

In his article "A more lovingly made world",^[2] McKenzie Wark of The New School writes that the problem with maker culture is that makers don't actually make things, they assemble them. While this experience is satisfying and fun (and Wark does acknowledge the way in which his children are not hemmed in by gender expectations while playing at the Maker Faire), it doesn't teach the underlying principles required for the actual making of functional objects. It also does not, though Chris Anderson and Mark Hatch evoke Marx in their Maker manifestos, map accurately onto an understanding of labor, and certainly not the life of the laborer.

The New School is a private non-profit research university centered in Manhattan, New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. Since then, the school has grown to house five divisions within the university. These include the Parsons School of Design, the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School for Social Research, the Schools of Public Engagement, the College of Performing Arts which consists of the Mannes School of Music, the School of Drama, and the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. In addition, the university maintains the Parsons Paris campus and has also launched or housed a range of institutions, such as the international research institute World Policy Institute, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the India China Institute, the Observatory on Latin America, and the Center for New York City Affairs.

Chris Anderson is a British-American author and entrepreneur. He was with The Economist for seven years before joining WIRED magazine in 2001, where he was the editor-in-chief until 2012. He is known for his 2004 article entitled The Long Tail; which he later expanded into the 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. He is the cofounder and current CEO of 3D Robotics, a drone manufacturing company.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.

Alessandro Carelli, Massimo Bianchini, and Venanzio Arquilla of the Politecnico di Milano argue that maker culture presents a "maker contradiction" in which DIY producers in the "so-called Third Industrial Revolution" become post-production consumers, further reinforcing hierarchies of social, political, and economic power.^[3]

The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of Computer Numeric Control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, the traditional arts and crafts. The subculture stresses a cut-and-paste approach to standardized hobbyist technologies, and encourages cookbook re-use of designs published on websites and maker-oriented publications. There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them to reference designs. There is also growing work on equity and the maker culture.

Economists use several concepts featuring the word "power":

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Pedagogy refers more broadly to the theory and practice of education, and how this influences the growth of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are exchanged in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Pedagogies vary greatly, as they reflect the different social, political, cultural contexts from which they emerge. Pedagogy is the act of teaching. Theories of pedagogy increasingly identify the student as an agent, and the teacher as a facilitator. Conventional western pedagogies, however, view the teacher as knowledge holder and student as the recipient of knowledge.

Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, or realized. "Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas. This has been a recurrent topic in the field of philosophy, discussed in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire, Ludwig von Mises, and many others. It has meaning in the political, educational, spiritual and medical realms.

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that has developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture. Advocates of critical pedagogy view teaching as an inherently political act, reject the neutrality of knowledge, and insist that issues of social justice and democracy itself are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning. The goal of critical pedagogy is emancipation from oppression through an awakening of the critical consciousness, based on the Portuguese term conscientização. When achieved, critical consciousness encourages individuals to effect change in their world through social critique and political action.

Peter McLaren is Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, College of Educational Studies, Chapman University, where he is Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice. He is also Emeritus Professor of Urban Education, University of California, Los Angeles, and Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership, Miami University of Ohio. He is also Honorary Director of Center for Critical Studies in Education in Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.

Critical literacy is defined as the ability to take apart various texts in media or writing to find any possible discrimination that the author might have embedded in his or her presentation of the world since authors have social and political influence. This is done by analyzing the messages promoting prejudiced power relationships found naturally in media and written material that go unnoticed otherwise by reading beyond the author’s words and examining the manner in which the author has conveyed his or her ideas about society’s norms to determine whether these ideas contain racial or gender inequality.

Culturally relevant or responsive teaching is a pedagogy grounded in teachers' displaying cultural competence: skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. Teachers using this method encourage each student to relate course content to his or her cultural context.

Critical consciousness, conscientization, or conscientização in Portuguese, is a popular education and social concept developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, grounded in post-Marxist critical theory. Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding.

McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born writer and scholar. Wark is known for their writings on media theory, critical theory, new media, and the Situationist International. Their best known works are A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory. They are Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The New School in New York City.

Joe Lyons Kincheloe was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies. Kincheloe received three graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee. The father of four children, he worked closely for the last 19 years of his life with his partner, Shirley R. Steinberg.

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The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) was founded in 2003 and is a non-profit membership association for scientific purposes in the field and discipline of cultural studies. Located in Chicago, IL, USA, the CSA is headed by an executive committee of American academics who guide the association's efforts to promote the exchange of ideas between scholars, hold annual conferences, and publish an educational journal.

Problem-posing education is a term coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Problem-posing refers to a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. Freire used problem-posing as an alternative to the banking model of education.

Antonia Darder American scholar and artist

Antonia Darder is a scholar, artist, poet, activist, and public intellectual. Darder holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. She also is Professor Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Critical making refers to the hands-on productive activities that link digital technologies to society. It was invented to bridge the gap between creative physical and conceptual exploration. The purpose of critical making resides in the learning extracted from the process of making rather than the experience derived from the finished output. The term "critical making" was popularized by Matt Ratto, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. Ratto describes one of the main goals of critical making as way "to use material forms of engagement with technologies to supplement and extend critical reflection and, in doing so, to reconnect our lived experiences with technologies to social and conceptual critique." "Critical making", as defined by practitioners like Matt Ratto and Stephen Hockema, "is an elision of two typically disconnected modes of engagement in the world — "critical thinking," often considered as abstract, explicit, linguistically based, internal and cognitively individualistic; and "making," typically understood as tacit, embodied, external, and community-oriented."

Social justice art, and arts for social justice, encompasses a wide range of visual and performing art that aim to raise critical consciousness, build community, and motivate individuals to promote social change. Art has been used as a means to record history, shape culture, cultivate imagination, and harness individual and social transformation. It can not only be a means to generate awareness, but it can also be a catalyst to engage community members to take action around a social issue. Social justice art consequently allows people to develop agency to interrupt and alter oppressive systemic patterns or individual behaviors. The processes by which people create and engage with art equips them with analytic tools to understand and challenge social injustices through social justice education, community building, and social activism/social movements. Examples of visual and performing social justice art includes: drawing, painting, sculpture, murals, graffiti, film, theater, music, dance, spoken word, etc.

Critical mathematics pedagogy is an approach to mathematics education that includes a practical and philosophical commitment to liberation. Approaches that involve critical mathematics pedagogy give special attention to the social, political, cultural and economic contexts of oppression, as they can be understood through mathematics. They also analyze the role that mathematics plays in producing and maintaining potentially oppressive social, political, cultural or economic structures. Finally, critical mathematics pedagogy demands that critique is connected to action promoting more just and equitable social, political or economic reform.

Critical pedagogy of place is a curricular approach to education that combines critical pedagogy and place-based education. It started as an attitude and approach to place-based and land-based education that criticized place-based education's invisible endorsement of colonial narratives and domineering relationships with the land. The scholars critiquing place-based education mainly focused on re-centering Indigenous voices in the curriculum. In the early 1990s, C.A. Bowers advocated for a critical pedagogy of place that acknowledged our enmeshment in cultural and ecological systems, and the resulting need for this to figure in the school curriculum. In 2003, David A. Greenwood introduced and defined the term "Critical Pedagogy of Place." In the years since, the general ideas of critical pedagogy of place have been incorporated into many scholars' critiques of place-based, land-based, and environmental education.

References

↑ Kincheloe, Joe L. (2008). Critical Pedagogy. Peter Lang Primer. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8204-7262-1.
↑ Wark, McKenzie (2013). "A more lovingly made world". Cultural Studies Review. 19: 296–304.
↑ Carelli, Alessandro; Massimo Bianchini, and Venanzio Arquilla (2014). "The 'Makers contradiction.' The shift from a counterculture-driven DIY production to a new form of DIY consumption". 5th STS Italia Conference A Matter of Design: Making Society through Science and Technology.

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[1] Kincheloe, Joe L. (2008). Critical Pedagogy. Peter Lang Primer. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8204-7262-1.

[2] Wark, McKenzie (2013). "A more lovingly made world". Cultural Studies Review. 19: 296–304.

[3] Carelli, Alessandro; Massimo Bianchini, and Venanzio Arquilla (2014). "The 'Makers contradiction.' The shift from a counterculture-driven DIY production to a new form of DIY consumption". 5th STS Italia Conference A Matter of Design: Making Society through Science and Technology.