The Curriculum Question
What do teachers really want when they ask for maker curriculum?
What do educators really want when they ask for maker curriculum? Or said another way, what do maker educators need to plan for a maker class?
A while ago, a person told me “that if Make produced curriculum, we would use it.”
“If we produced curriculum, and you used it, I fear your students wouldn’t be making,” I replied. I struggle with the word “curriculum” because it seems like a substitute for designing the actual experience for students. I worry that asking for curriculum is asking that making conform to education rather than transform it.
I once saw the syllabus for a Making 101 class at a community college that consisted of a reading list of books about making — I was aghast that my book, Free to Make, was on the list. Students would read about making but they weren’t actually making anything. It’s kind of like reading a book about exercise without actually exercising.
I get that sometimes teachers ask for curriculum because administrators ask to see it. I get that teachers have to tie what they teach to standards. I also know that some of the best teachers feel free to work outside curriculum and standards to meet the needs of students. Asking for curriculum is like asking to find an easy way to do something that is just difficult to do well.
A friend who was a STEM curriculum developer told me that she visited a classroom where the teacher was asking her for more curriculum. She pointed to a bookshelf and asked the question: “Is that curriculum?”
“Yes,” the teacher replied.
“Do you use it?”
“No,” said the teacher.
So why would you ask for more curriculum, the curriculum developer wondered to herself. Do teachers just get used to asking for more curriculum - the more the better. I’ve also seen a lot of grant proposals to develop maker curriculum. I don’t know if the curriculum that gets developed really achieves the goal of engaging more students in making.
I appreciate that a teacher needs a plan for a maker course and how to organize it. But I don’t think they should want a one-size-fits-all plan nor do they need a script and canned content to present to students. Making wants to accomplish something different than the traditional curriculum. It should be different for both teachers and students. It wants to be the exception, not the rule. Making is experiential — learning by doing.
There are many ways to plan for a variety of rich experiences for students. One might organize the makerspace in the best way to engage students in those experiences. One should make sure students have choice and they can explore their own interests and ideas. One should develop real skills by giving students the opportunity to practice them and apply them to real-world problems. One should seek out other maker educators, visit their makerspaces and learn from them.
I came across Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience. It’s about how we learn best. I’d say that traditional curriculum tends to occupy the top of the pyramid — reading, listening, watching— whereas making is focused at the bottom of this pyramid — hands-on learning, designing, collaborating, creating, communicating. One might notice that learning outcomes that people generally remember are the ones where they have agency and choice in determining what they do.
Jamie Agius, who works for Make:, was a makerspace teacher in high school. I asked her about maker curriculum.
When I was a makerspace teacher, I had a very challenging and unique experience—but maybe all new makerspace teachers feel that way! I wasn’t really looking for “curriculum,” because no matter what other teachers were doing, I likely wouldn’t have been able to implement it anyway. I was starting with 240 students each semester, literally zero budget, and had a lot of difficulty getting the course approved in the first place. I had to “sell” my course as a CS requirement fulfillment, and also as a Tech requirement fullfillment, AND I had to obtain several new CS AND CTE credentials to “qualify” for teaching it even though I was already credentialed to teach high school science.
I think the reason asking for curriculum is so hard to explain is because teaching a makerspace class is such a subjective experience, depending on what type of graduation requirements the class has been approved to meet. There are no widely accepted benchmarks for what it means to successfully teach a makerspace class, so having completely free rein and no guide is totally overwhelming.
Unlike Math, Science, Language Arts, or Social Studies, a makerspace class depends entirely on what the course counts for in terms of graduation credit—whether that’s an A-G elective, CTE, Tech credit, CS credit, etc. The curriculum can’t really be streamlined the way it can be in other core subjects, even within A-G electives.
When I was developing my own makerspace curriculum, it would have been helpful for me not to have to figure out how to fight the battle, as well as figure out how to teach it, supply it, fund it, manage it, and keep it up at the same time. So, while having a statewide guide that schools accept, fund, and support in the same ways they support the teaching of other subjects, MIGHT seem like a constraint as far as makerspaces go, at least I would have had something to follow and that I knew would be accepted.
Ultimately, for me, I wouldn’t have necessarily asked for a curriculum but what I do think would have been helpful would have been infrastructure set up at the state and district levels first, to support already qualified and credentialed teachers, set benchmarks for teachers to meet, fund the program, and approve the course to meet graduation requirements. I feel like if more structure existed, there would in fact be teachers out there developing and sharing curriculum.
What are your experiences using or developing curriculum for maker education? What, if anything, can be done to satisfy those teachers who ask for maker curriculum without compromising the goal of engaging students in hands-on experiences and empowering them to direct their own learning? I ask these questions to know how MakerEd and other groups can be the most helpful in encouraging more teachers to become maker educators.
I completely agree that making needs to be experiential. I also think that the teachers that ask for curriculum aren’t actually asking for curriculum at all. They’re asking for structure—systems and routines that give opportunity for making. I think that’s a niche that Make: could fulfill. What are ways we could enhance student making experience so that both teacher and student feel supported in the inherently chaotic and unpredictable experimental process?
Thanks for this article. I was a teacher for about 7 years in Germany and now am working together with educators/teachers/princiaps etc. to implement making (or makereducation) at there schools/insitutation. I'm not very well aware about how the american school system works, but in Germany it's very divers: Tons of different types of school, each state with it's own curricular and so an...it's a mess! For what I see, one of the biggest problems is that teachers feel overwhelmed the the standards they need to meet with the time, they have at their disposal. So even if they feel like making seems to be a right fit for their students, it mostly comes down to "well we just don't have the time for that..there are tests, and our state curricular" and since there is a biiiiiiiiig lack of professional educators, there is very limited time for special classes, such as a maker class.
With that in mind, what I'm trying to do with the teachers is, to find oppurtinities for them, to implement making in their regular lessons, so it fits the regular curricular standards of their state.
Sometimes this feels like it's neither fish nor fowl, since it's way more staged than I would like some making-activities to but. But I feel like it's one way to make teachers feel more confident when trying to implement makeredu oppurtinities.