Introducing Educators to the Agency by Design Initiative

On Monday, March 11, 2013 the Agency by Design team was in Oakland, CA to lead our first-ever full-school professional development session for educators. The three-hour session was held at Park Day School and introduced approximately 40 Kindergarten – 8th grade teachers to the core tenets of our project. A variety of hands-on activities and Project Zero thinking routines had teachers looking at the intricacies of objects, situating those objects in broader systems, considering those systems through multiple user perspectives, and then brainstorming and prototyping redesign ideas for those systems. This process of developing a sensitivity to design primed educators to consider how equipping students with a deeper understanding of the design of objects, ideas, and systems may ultimately lead to an enhanced sense of agency.

The Park Day School teachers wowed us with their enthusiasm and cheerful investigation of complex ideas. A lot of great thinking emerged from the session—and we certainly learned a lot!

Park Day School teachers considered the parts, purposes, and complexities of a variety of household objects such as this extension cord, calculator, and box of tissues.

Park Day School teachers carefully investigate a pair of staplers before engaging in the redesign process.

Park Day School teachers used the Parts/Purposes/Complexities thinking routine to better understand the intricacies of a funky bicycle helmet.

The Maker Mind: Taking a Closer Look at the Way Makers’ Minds Work

Does exposure to maker-oriented activities foster the development of a “maker mind” in young people? Artists and designers from the Flux Foundation develop educational experiences for kids, such as these elementary school students from Park Day School, to do just that. Photo by Brooke Buchanan.

At Project Zero, one of the things we’re interested in is understanding cognition—or in other words—how the mind works. In fact, long time PZ researcher Howard Gardner is famous for investigating, identifying, and naming various kinds of “minds.” The disciplined mind, the creating mind, the synthesizing mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind are all part of the cognitive suite Gardner calls the Five Minds for the Future. Despite the care Gardner has taken in articulating the most essential minds for the 21^st century, we wonder if—perhaps—yet another mind can be added to the mix: the Maker Mind.

During our September 2012 visit to the Bay Area our colleagues at the Abundance Foundation arranged for us to have lunch with Jess Hobbs and Catie Magee, two artists who play leadership roles in the Flux Foundation, an Oakland-based not-for-profit organization that “engages people in designing and building large-scale public art as a catalyst for education, collaboration, and empowerment.” Amongst some of their large-scale sculptures have been huge productions such as “Temple of Flux,” a commissioned sculptural work installed—and later burned to the ground—at the 2010 Burning Man Festival. Flux also runs a collaborative community based education initiative known as TweetHaus “a public art + ecology project focused on citizen science, interactive learning and collaboration [that] fosters community through the design, construction and installation of bird habitats and public pathways in urban environments.”

How Does a Maker Space Build Community?: With Snow…

Teams of makers and non-makers alike came together to make stuff with snow at the Artisan’s Asylum Snow Day Maker Party.

Understanding how community develops through maker, tinkering, and design thinking experiences is one of the key aspects of the Agency by Design initiative. And so, when a maker space in our own back yard sent out a Facebook community alert this past week—we were all ears…

As many of you will have heard (or experienced!) on February 8–9, 2013 a powerful winter storm rolled over the Northeast United States, dumping nearly 24 inches of snow on the greater Boston area. While local residents hunkered down to weather the storm, Artisan’s Asylum—a 40,000 square foot maker space in Somerville, MA—was plotting a snow day party for makers in nearby Union Square.

Identifying Core Outcomes of Maker and Design Thinking Education: Fostering a Sense of “I Can Do That!”

Science teacher Bruce Hamren shows Agency by Design researchers an early prototype for a speed crutch developed by students and faculty at the Athenian School to help young people in wheel chairs experience the feeling of jogging on a track.

There is a growing body of literature advocating for the incorporation of maker and design thinking experiences in a variety of educational settings. Much of this literature suggests that maker and design thinking curricula have the potential to increase student engagement, promote “hand-mind” expertise, and/or bolster performance in STEM subjects. Though such outcomes make intuitive sense, there is little research to back these claims.

This being the case, we’ve been deeply interested in finding out what are the real benefits of maker and design thinking experiences, and how do educators recognize evidence of those outcomes in their students.

Pedagogical approaches to maker and design thinking curricula vary widely from one context to the next. Nonetheless, one of the big questions we consistently ask people who teach such courses is: what do you consider to be the core outcomes of maker and design thinking curricula? When we visited with Bruce Hamren and David Otten at the Athenian School’s Makers Studio we received an exciting answer to our question. Simply put: maker and design thinking experiences foster a sense of “I can do that!” in young people.

Doors to Innovation: The entrance to the Athenian School’s Makers Studio presents guests with some exciting options…

During our September 2012 visit to the Bay Area, the Agency by Design team cruised over to Danville, CA to visit the Makers Studio at the Athenian School. When we arrived we found our way across the school’s campus to a building with two doors. The door on the left was marked with a sign that read Robotics Barn, the door on the right was marked Airplane Barn.

“Airplane Barn?” we thought to ourselves…

Welcome to Making Thinking Happen!

Members of the Agency by Design Learning Community have fun looking at complex objects during a “sensitivity to design” study group session at Park Day School in Oakland, CA.

Welcome to Making Thinking Happen, the official blog of the Agency by Design research and development initiative at Project Zero, a research organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through the support of the Abundance Foundation the focus of this project is to explore the learning opportunities that exist at the intersection of the maker movement, design thinking, and extant Project Zero frameworks.

There are two primary strands of activity for this study. The first is a series of interviews with designers, makers, tinkerers, artists, and educators involved with design thinking and the maker movement, paired with a review of literature related to these domains.

Given the rising presence of design thinking and maker programming in schools and after school programs, the second strand of activity of this study involves a partnership with a group of K-12 educators from several schools in the Temescal region of Oakland, California. Through classroom-based activities and action research, we’ll be investigating ways to strengthen students’ cognitive development in three areas: (1) the capacity to recognize and appreciate the design dimensions of objects, ideas, and systems; (2) the capacity to be agents of change with regard to design in the world, and; (3) the capacity to think and learn through tinkering.