The Roles and Responsibilities of Makerspace Educators

The maker movement is rapidly growing as schools look to address learning in the subjects of STEM subjects. This movement emerged from Papert’s 1980 theory of constructionism. Makerspaces are venues where students have the opportunity to create artifacts that demonstrate their learning about a subject. Students may also tinker and create new artifacts within a makerspace. Much research on the maker movement is anecdotal, focusing on the student experience in makerspaces. Little was known about the role of the educator in a makerspace. The purpose of this study was to examine the roles and responsibilities of educators while implementing makerspaces in formal and informal settings as described by instructional practices of collaborative learning, engineering design thinking, and problem- and project-based learning. A phenomenological research design was used in this study. The data collected included interviews with 10 makerspace educators, archival data, and classroom observations assessed using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol. It was found that makerspace teachers have many responsibilities as they lead learning in their classrooms, including providing resources, mentoring students, and planning instruction to meet curriculum objectives. Educators should determine the focus of their makerspace and select appropriate curriculum standards to maximize student learning. Organizations that wish to implement makerspaces should give special attention to professional development for all educators who are interested in implementing making into their classrooms