Collaborative Research: The Notion of Failure and Maker Programming for Youth: Supporting the Professional Development, Reflection, and Learning of Informal Educators

近年来，人们对制造和创客空间的兴趣稳步增长。在创客空间中，人们可以参与到从不同元素（使用高科技和非科技工具）创造东西的过程中。虽然这些空间为个人和多代群体提供了合作的机会，但人们对涉及与创客相关的活动和内容的结构化青年节目也有更广泛的兴趣。然而，研究知情的专业发展，重点是如何非正式教育工作者实施，计划，并在失败的时刻处理持续的，及时的支持是稀缺的。先前的研究支持失败在创客编程中的重要作用，以增加学习，弹性，自我效能和其他技能，如独立性。该项目将通过调整、实施和完善非正式教育工作者的专业发展计划来解决差距，以便在参与制造者计划时有效地参与、解释和应对青年的失败经历。这项研究的背景是博物馆，提供制造商编程。这个发展中的创新项目采用培训培训师的方法进行专业发展。在第一阶段，每个伙伴机构最多有两名牵头促进者参加为期三天的初步讲习班和持续的支助会议。在第二阶段，主要促进者支持其他非正式教育工作者在他们的机构实施青年制作计划。该项目将加强研究和教育的基础设施，因为将在各种非正式学习机构之间建立协作和专业学习社区。核心合作伙伴包括：创新科技博物馆、巴肯博物馆、蒙郡科学博物馆、明尼阿波利斯艺术学院、思想家博物馆和Amazeum儿童博物馆。这项工作的核心假设是，一个专业发展计划，重点是支持非正式教育工作者的教学实践，以应对青年的失败经验，将产生积极的影响，发展参与者围绕失败发展教学实践，以及发展青年的亲和力，在制定任务和强烈的自我意识作为一个制造商的弹性。该项目利用基于力量的复原力观点，使团队能够考虑帮助青年克服失败负面影响的促进因素或变量。该项目借鉴了突出专业发展对教师知识和信念，课堂实践和学生成果的积极影响的研究，将Borko，Koellner和Swackhamer的问题解决周期模型适应博物馆的背景。具体的研发&目标是：（1）调查专业发展模式的特点，这些模式最能支持主要促进者支持非正式教育工作者在参与制定任务时关注、解释和应对青年的失败经历;（2）调查非正式教育工作者通过参与专业发展模式，围绕青年的失败经历，改变教学实践;（3）考察青少年复原力和失败感的变化。这项工作的一个目标是提高失败在整个学习过程中的重要性。该项目的迭代性质将通过收集和分析专业发展会议和非正式教育工作者的视频数据，促进制造商计划，反思性日志，有关专业发展的调查，以及从事制造商计划的青年的事前事后调查。传播将针对多个利益相关者，包括非正式教育工作者，项目开发人员，评估人员，研究人员和公众audios.This项目由推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，该计划旨在推进新的方法，并以证据为基础的理解，在非正式环境中设计和开发STEM学习。这包括提供多种途径，以扩大获得和参与STEM学习经验，推进创新研究和评估的STEM学习在非正式环境中，并发展的理解，更深层次的学习参与者。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准的支持。

Interest in making and makerspaces -- collaborative workspaces where people can engage in a process of creating something from separate elements (using high and no tech tools) -- has grown steadily in recent years. While these spaces offer opportunity for individuals and multi-generational groups to work together, there is also more broad interest in structured youth programming that involves maker-related activities and content. Yet, research-informed professional development that focuses on how informal educators implement, plan, and handle ongoing, just-in-time support during moments of failure is scarce. Prior research supports the important role of failure in maker programming to increase learning, resilience, self-efficacy and other skills such as independence. This project will address the gap through adapting, implementing, and refining a professional development program for informal educators to productively attend, interpret, and respond to youths’ experiences with failure while engaged in maker programs. The contexts for this research are museums that provide maker programming. This Innovations in Development project uses a train-the-trainer approach to professional development. Up to two lead facilitators at each partnering institution experience an initial three-day workshop and ongoing support meetings during the first phase. In the second phase, the lead facilitators support other informal educators at their institution implementing making programs for youth. This project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education as collaborations and professional learning communities will be established among a variety of informal learning institutions. Core partners include: The Tech Museum of Innovation, The Bakken Museum, Montshire Museum of Science, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Thinkery, and Amazeum Children’s Museum. The central hypothesis framing the work is that a professional development program focused on supporting informal educators' instructional practices on ways to respond to youths' experiences with failure will have a positive impact on developing participants developing pedagogical practices around failure, as well as developing youths' affinity for resilience during making tasks and a strong sense of self as a maker. The project utilizes a strengths-based perspective of the resilience that allows the team to consider promotive factors or variables that help youth overcome negative effects of failures. The project draws from research highlighting the positive impact of professional development on teacher knowledge and beliefs, classroom practice, and student outcomes adapting the Problem-Solving Cycle model of Borko, Koellner, and Swackhamer to the context of museums. The specific R&D aims are to: (1) Investigate features of the professional development models that best support lead facilitators in supporting informal educators in attending, interpreting, and responding to youths' experiences with failure while engaged in making tasks; (2) Investigate changes of informal educators' pedagogical practice around youths' experiences with failures through engaging in the professional development models; and (3) Examine shifts in youths' resiliency and perception of failure. A goal of the work is to raise the importance of failure in the overall learning process. The iterative nature of this project will be informed by the collection and analysis of video data of professional development sessions and informal educators facilitating maker programs, reflective journaling, surveys regarding the professional development, and pre-post surveys from youth engaged in the maker programs. Dissemination will address multiple stakeholders, including informal educators, program developers, evaluators, researchers, and public audiences.This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.