Maker Education Meets Technology Education : Reflections on Good Practices

Abstract

In this book two fields meet, Technology Education with its long history, and Maker Education, a relative new shoot in the educational field. Both focus on learning through making and both value agency and motivation of learners. The purpose of this book is to understand and analyze the kind of informal and formal educational activities that take place under the umbrella of the Maker Movement and then relate this to the field of Technology Education to uncover what researchers, innovators and teachers in this field can learn from the principles, ideas and practices that are central to the Maker Movement and vice versa. The book contains two types of chapters. The first type is case study chapters that span from Mexico, China, Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands to Kenya and from primary to tertiary level, showing a variety of good practices in maker education including both formal and informal contexts. In the subsequent thematic chapters, dedicated authors have used the case studies to reflect on themes such as curriculum reform, social learning, materiality, spatial thinking, informal versus formal learning as well as the sustainability of learning and relate what is happening in Maker Education with Technology Education to imagine possible futures for Maker Education.