MAKER: An Ethnography of Maker and Hacker Spaces Achieving Diverse Participation

Maker Spaces被广泛吹捧为科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)教育的潜在解放时刻，提供了一个机会，通过让传统上代表不足的群体进入STEM领域，让他们参与开放、创造性和支持各种背景的人的空间。与此同时，早期的报告表明，许多制造者和黑客空间已经制定了某些规范，更有利于白人、男性、中产阶级和健全的业余爱好者的参与。尽管有这种趋势，但也有一些空间明显脱颖而出，因为它们包括无家可归者、女性、有色人种和具有不同能力的人。该项目研究了多样化的创客空间如何欢迎传统上在STEM中代表性不足的群体，以及这些做法如何为目前努力实现多样性的校园和社区创客或黑客空间的设计和运营提供参考。民族志方法和批评性话语分析(CDA)被用来理解这些空间的物理和语言人工制品。这项参与性行动研究(PAR)包括6至8个包容性制造者和黑客空间的民族志，一个侧重于确定和分析可转移包容性实践的核心属性的开放空间技术(OST)研讨会，以及以适用的方式反思地总结和传播这些信息到学术和社区网站的CDA。研究问题包括：(1)不同创客和黑客空间的参与者采用哪些实践和人工制品来建立和维护多样化和包容性的环境？(2)不同创客和黑客空间中的话语揭示了意义和价值是如何围绕身份、创造力和生产文化/工程文化的生产而共同构建的？(3)从不同的创客和黑客空间中产生了哪些最佳实践，以及这些最佳实践如何转化为校园和社区中现有的创客空间的设计或改造？智力价值：这项工作是在早期使用CDA，PAR的Highlander品系和OST，都是工程教育中的新奇；早期寻求描述有助于新兴的多样化创造者空间的解放性质的特征。这项工作是跨学科的，在利用语言分析和社会理论来寻找排他性STEM做法的根本原因方面具有跨学科和潜在的变革性，以建立包容的校园和社区创建者空间(以及其他STEM空间)的潜在高回报。更广泛的影响：该项目共同构建了在体验式课程中激发创新设计思维的方法；通过嵌入包容性实践，增加对STEM的保留和扩大参与；通过由制造商、学生和教职员工组成的地方和国家网络，增强公民工程师的能力；并使STEM能够采用新的学习和设计思维方式，通过为本科工程师提供渐进式学习环境来丰富美国的创新生态系统。除了通过STEM教育文献和由150名工程学院院长和其他致力于在校园做出贡献的学术领袖组成的网络进行传统传播外，研究成果还通过制造商虚拟社区、制造商博览会和非正式网络进行非传统传播。

Maker spaces have been widely touted as a potentially liberative moment for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, presenting an opportunity to bring traditionally underrepresented groups into STEM fields by engaging them in spaces that are open, creative, and supportive of people from all backgrounds. At the same time, early reports indicate that many maker and hacker spaces are already enacting certain norms that are more conducive to participation of white, male, middle-class, able-bodied hobbyists. Despite this trend, there are spaces that explicitly stand out in their inclusion of homeless makers, women, people of color, and people with different kinds of abilities. This project examines how diverse maker spaces welcome groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, and how these practices can inform the design and operation of campus and community maker or hacker spaces that presently struggle to achieve diversity. Ethnographic methods and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are used to understand these spaces in terms of their physical and linguistic artifacts. This Participatory Action Research (PAR) includes ethnographies at 6 to 8 inclusive maker and hacker spaces, an Open Space Technology (OST) workshop focused on identifying and analyzing core attributes of transferable inclusive practices, and CDA that reflexively summarizes and propagates this information in applicable ways to academic and community sites. Research questions include: (1) What practices and artifacts do participants in diverse maker and hacker spaces employ to establish and maintain environments that are diverse and inclusive? (2) What does the discourse in diverse maker and hacker spaces reveal about how meaning and value are co-constructed around identity, creativity, and the culture of production / the production of culture in engineering? (3) What best practices emerge from diverse maker and hacker spaces, and how can these translate to design or transformation of existing maker spaces on campuses and in communities? Intellectual Merit: This work is early in its use of CDA, the Highlander strain of PAR, and OST, all novel in engineering education; and early in seeking to characterize features contributing to the liberatory nature of emergent diverse maker spaces. The work is interdisciplinary and potentially transformative in leveraging linguistic analysis and social theories to ferret out root causes of exclusionary STEM practices for the potential high payoff of building campus and community maker spaces (and other STEM spaces) that are inclusive. Broader Impacts: This project co-constructs ways to stimulate innovative design thinking in experiential curricula; increases retention and broadens participation in STEM by embedding inclusive practices; empowers citizen engineers through local and national networks of makers, students, and faculty; and enables new ways of STEM learning and design thinking that will enrich the U.S. innovation ecosystem through progressive learning environments for undergraduate engineers. Findings are propagated non-tradtionally via maker virtual communities, maker faires, and informal networks, in addition to traditional propagation through the STEM education literature and the network of 150 engineering deans and other academic leaders committed to making on campus.