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Work in Progress - The Development of Agency in a High School Maker Class: Evidence from Interviews

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

ERM Technical Session 7: Learning and Research in Makerspaces

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

6

DOI

10.18260/1-2--33569

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/33569

Download Count

376

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Paper Authors

biography

Lee Michael Martin University of California, Davis Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3178-8999

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Lee Martin studies people’s efforts to enhance their own learning environments, with a particular focus on mathematical, engineering, and design thinking. In everyday settings, he looks at the varied ways in which people assemble social, material, and intellectual resources for problem solving and learning. In school settings, he looks to find ways in which schools might better prepare students to be more resourceful and flexible in fostering their own learning.

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Abstract

One hypothesized benefit of engagement in hands-on, do-it-yourself, or “maker” activities is an increased sense of agency – self confidence in the ability to complete projects and make change in the world. While there is good evidence that agency and self-efficacy are critical for student success (e.g., Godwin, 2016), little is known about what agency looks like in maker contexts, nor how it develops over time. In this paper, we investigate if and how student agency develops within a high school maker program. The study took place in a diverse public charter school in California. In partnership with a classroom teacher, we collaboratively ran a weekly, full day maker class at the school. Data collection spans two and a half school years. The class structure was open ended, with students having substantial autonomy to choose and work on projects of their own choosing. Our data consists of brief, 2-6 minute interviews with students, conducted at the end of each maker work session. Interview questions varied but always asked students what they worked on that day and if they encountered any sticking points in their work. The data corpus consists of approximately 600 interviews. This paper analyses a subset of this data corpus well suited to examining trends over time: we analyze nine students who enrolled in the class for 2 or more years and completed 20 or more interviews each. This yielded 235 interviews for analysis, with an average of 26 interviews per student. We conducted inductive qualitative coding of the interview data, focused on the theme of student agency. Preliminary findings show that agency is a multi-faceted construct. Students spoke of their agency in several distinct categories, including agency over materials and technologies, over their own knowledge, and over social dimensions of the classroom. Analyses of trends over time are ongoing, but initial results show that statements of agency increased over time and were connected to statements about feelings of belonging in the space. We conclude with implications for practice.

Martin, L. M. (2019, June), Work in Progress - The Development of Agency in a High School Maker Class: Evidence from Interviews Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33569

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