New publication: "Recognition in Makerspaces: Supporting Opportunities for Women to 'Make' a STEM Career"

Associate Professor of Education Kylie Peppler has published with Indiana University colleagues Anna Keune and Karen E. Wohlwend in Computers in Human Behavior: "Recognition in Makerspaces: Supporting Opportunities for Women to 'Make' a STEM Career."

Peppler has a broad array of research interests that include arts, computational technologies, computer science, constructionism, creativity, design, education, e-textiles, gaming, maker culture, new media, out-of-school learning, and wearable computing. At UCI she holds a joint appointment in the School of Education and the Department of Informatics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

Abstract

Making is a playful exploration of tools and materials to design personally meaningful artifacts, providing a particularly impactful entry point for traditionally underrepresented youth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. 

However, it remains unclear how these constructionist explorations translate to eventual professional and educational STEM opportunities, especially for women. This paper tracks an ex- emplary case in a makerspace to theorize, describe, and analyze the behavioral patterns of young women as they engage in making and move toward expertise in STEM. Building on a material-based and constructionist notion of making, we use mediated discourse analysis to examine how recognition (materialized in artifacts as dis- playing, legitimizing, and circulating emergent STEM expertise) leads to transformational development over time. We introduce the notion of tinkering with development, which conceptualizes playful project design, spatial project placements, and emergent online project sharing as drivers of human developmental trajectories. Implications of this work include a set of design principles to support makerspaces and other constructionist learning environments to foster participation in STEM. Further, implications for constructionist theory and STEM gender representation are discussed.