Reclaiming Traditionally Feminine Practices and Materials for STEM Learning Through the Modern Maker Movement

Abstract

Making, an educational reform movement that celebrates hands-on creative practices and technological inventiveness, is expanding in K-16 settings (Peppler, Halverson, & Kafai, 2016). The practice of making is conceptually inclusive of a range of tools and materials. From creating cardboard castles to laser cutting nature-inspired models, making provides youth the space to design personally meaningful artifacts. In our view, this aligns with constructionist approaches to learning (Papert, 1980) and promises a particularly impactful entry point for traditionally underrepresented youth to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.Despite these promises, critiques have been raised from inside the maker educational movement that making is all too often associated with hightechnology practices, including robotics, which may traditionally be more appealing to male audiences (Buechley, 2013). Although other material practices, such as fiber crafts, are also featured at world Maker Faires, flagship events showcase the state-of-the-art projects, while other practices are often relegated to the sidelines. Today, textile crafts have seen a resurgence of interest both within the maker movement and beyond, prompting us to re-examine the connections between crafting, mathematics, and computing. History demonstrates repeated patterns of innovation that have stemmed from traditionally feminine practices and materials. One prominent example arcs back to the history of computing, which is rooted in weaving, crocheting, and other textile crafts. Central to this examination is the role of embodied forms of learning, inherent in this view of constructionist theory in the form of body syntonicity.This chapter examines contemporary cases of traditionally feminine crafts through the lens of constructionist theory to uncover how embodied forms of learning can disrupt-and ultimately benefit-STEM learning through the integration of new materials and practices. The data presented here draw heavily on our interventionist work in school and out-of-school settings with

Material syntonicity: Examining computational performance and its materiality through weaving and sewing crafts

“…For example, posthumanist perspectives found resonance in mathematics and maker education to show the role of the body in mathematical becoming (De Freitas & Sinclair, 2014;Sinclair & de Freitas, 2019), the co-development of people, material arrangements, and learning opportunities , and learning ecosystems (Hecht & Crowley, 2020). Additionally, considerations of what posthumanist perspectives can contribute to the study of learning were kindled by workshops at conferences of the International Society of the Learning Sciences Peppler et al, 2019), which discussed aspects of the present study, and a special issue that thematized posthumanist approaches for technology-rich learning (Peppler et al, 2020). Through these venues, learning sciences and literacy scholars have grappled with what it might mean to consider learning phenomena in posthumanist terms (e.g., Metho et al, 2020;Sheridan et al, 2020).…”

“…The present study builds on longer-term research on fiber crafts for mathematics learning that identified crafts as a lifelong context for mathematics learning (e.g., Peppler et al, 2020), community activism , and technology innovation (Keune et al, 2021). To shift the work into computing, I conducted a study to align fiber crafts with computer science concepts through artifact analyses with computer science experts before facilitating the crafts with students.…”

“…Therefore, some English was used to shorten operations that would require many lines of code to be performed by the computer but were not performed by the child in the same way. The translation of crafts into pseudocode was inspired by previous translations of fiber crafts into mathematical formulas (e.g., Peppler et al, 2020) and by work that translated weaving into the Scheme programming language (e.g., Griffiths & McLean, 2017). The analysis presented the basis for understanding how the engagement with disciplinary concepts materialized in students' artifacts and how it changed over time and across crafts.…”

World‐Making Through a Feminist Abolitionist Lens in a STEAM Middle School Program

“…A distinct strategy for engaging girls in STEM can be seen in tools and curriculum developed to bring "craft practices, " traditionally seen as feminine, into makerspaces (Peppler et al, 2020;Shaw et al, 2021;Thompson, 2024). Thompson (2024) considers how middle school students engaged with complex and culturally-historically rooted mathematical practices through weaving.…”

Women in Engineering Education: Five Strategies to Promote Women in Engineering Education

“…Maker movement is one of the examples [12][13][14]. Students are given the opportunity to investigate, experiment, and create as a result of the incorporation of maker education into the engineering curriculum.…”