Back to search

FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren

Maker-Centered Learning: cultivating creativity in tomorrow’s schools

Alternative title: Skaperorientert læring: Å fremme kreativitet i morgendagens skoler

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

Our children live in an increasingly complex world, with enormous cultural, societal, and environmental challenges. To help them we need informed educational practices that cultivate 21st century competences such as creative problem solving, collaboration skills, technology and programming skills and a transdisciplinary mindset. In this project we will develop new scientific knowledge on accessible educational practices for cultivating the learner’s creativity and innovation capabilities in tomorrow’s schools. Digital fabrication technologies have given rise to maker-centered learning, where the aim is to foster creativity through collaborative technology and artifact-mediated making processes. New digital instruments, practices, and materials for creative production and STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) are already brought into several Norwegian schools in the form of makerspaces. School makerspaces provide arenas for inclusive, creative, and innovative collaboration between pupils in which they engage in multiple disciplinary problem solving and open the doors to the world of technology. For teachers there is now an urgent need for pedagogical methods and tools for implementing schools’ maker projects in effective and conscious ways. In this project we will develop and implement new pedagogical practices in schools through researcher-teacher partnerships in Norwegian schools. In this way we can test and iterate these new practices and understandings while at the same time educating in-service teachers. Arts and crafts teachers, teacher educators and researchers come together in collaboration in this project. The project is led by USN, with OsloMet and Helsinki University as partners. Creativity researchers and experts on maker centered learning from University of North Carolina and University of California contribute as experts.

The present project analyses creative maker-centered learning and pedagogical practices of systematically educating creativity in the primary and secondary schools. The digital fabrication technologies have given rise to maker-centered learning, providing new digital instruments, practices, and materials for creative production and STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). For teachers there is now an urgent need for pedagogical methods and tools for implementing schools’ maker projects, and on how to support heterogeneous students groups from the perspective of differentiation. This project will study and implement new pedagogical practices that will contribute to student creativity, capacities for innovation and design thinking. It will also address the need of differentiating learning practices so that these practices are accessible to all students. Thus, it is now critical to better understand how creativity is educated and cultivated in school makerspaces in Norway and how maker-centered learning is implemented and used to augment creative capabilities and digital competences with for all children. The main objective of this research project is to generate new scientific knowledge on accessible educational practices for cultivating the learner’s and teachers’ creativity and innovation capabilities in order to bridge the ingenuity gap in tomorrow’s schools. The research project focuses on qualitative investigations of maker-centered learning and teachers’ pedagogical practices and facilitation of the maker projects by utilizing educational Design-based research (EDR). We investigate and develop new pedagogic practices by which digital skills and competences of designing and making is cultivated through sustained participation in makerspaces. The analysis of deliberately educating maker-centered learning and creativity can be generalized and will provide a sound basis for fostering creativity across different levels of education.

Funding scheme:

FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren