Equity-Oriented Pedagogical Strategies and Student Learning in After School Making

The maker movement holds great promise to improve the educational experiences of all learners, regardless of age, race/ethnicity, gender, home language, ability, or socioeconomic class. This paper describes how we sought to fulfill this promise by creating a new after school making program serving working class and low-income youth of color in East Oakland. Building on our prior efforts investigating equity-oriented tinkering in after school settings [1, 2], the work described here is part of a larger study led by the Research + Practice Collaboratory (see www.researchandpractice.org). The Collaboratory formed a partnership with the Lighthouse Community Charter School of East Oakland to examine how afterschool tinkering programs support the development of student learning outcomes that are valued during the school day, specifically the development of learning dispositions, creative problem solving, and deeper understanding of STEM concepts and practices. After describing pedagogical strategies (in program/curriculum design and teaching moves) our program used to build a creative making culture, we share a detailed case describing what learning outcomes looked like for a Latina 5th grader (Katrina) who had never been in a making program, never worked with circuitry or soldering, and did not initially identify as a "maker."