tre skoleelever arbeider med ledninger og roboter i et skaperverksted. Foto

This project develop new scientific knowledge on accessible educational practices for cultivating the learner’s creativity and innovation capabilities in tomorrow’s schools. 

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 the Makerspace

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.

Deliberate teaching and enhaced practise

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 enhance knowledge on how deliberate teaching for creativity can be realized in school makerspaces. We will also generate knowledge on how maker-centered learning may be used to augment creative capabilities and digital competences and how teachers can best facilitate, and scaffold students’ innovation processes. 

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. 

Collaboration

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.

This research project was initiated by the Embodied Making and Learning Research group (EMAL).

About MAKER:

Project name: Maker-Centered Learning: Cultivating creativity in tomorrow’s schools (MAKER)

Read our publications here (Cristin)

Contact: Camilla Groth (USN)

Project Manager: Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen (USN)

Funding: 12 million NOK through the Research Council of Norway's (RCN) «Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal»

Project period: 12.01.2021 - 10.31.2025

Collaboration:

Participants:

Related projects:

This research project was initiated by the Embodied Making and Learning Research group (EMAL)

Publications