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Maker Education and STEM+ in the Context of Contemporary Constructionism:

Iterative Resilience and Community

Andri Ioannou¹, Chrystalleni Loizidou¹, Dishita Turakhia², Sherry Lassiter³, Joe Diaz³,& Stefanie Mueller³

�¹Cyprus Interaction Lab, Cyprus University of Technology

²New York University, NY, USA

³MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA�

Constructionism 2025 | ETH Zurich and PHZH

The work received funding from the Fulbright (Visiting Scholar Program) via the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus (2024).

Photograph by Andri Ioannou (2024) MIT Edgerton Center

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What do maker-educators care and talk about?

(New England,

summer 2024)

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Presentation breakdown

Background & aim of the study
Research Design & Methodology
Limitations of the study
Emergent themes

Focus 1: The priority of Community

Building & sustaining community

Focus 2: Iterative resilience:

designing resilience

Conclusion: Community for resilience

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How can Maker Education evolve towards its initial vision, transcend current limitations, and deliver meaningful, scalable, and inclusive learning experiences?

We initiated conversations around this question and documented responses from STEAM teacher trainers, maker educators, students and school leaders in New England, USA (8 recorded interviews+). Out of this mini-corpus of interviews and observations, this short paper focuses on the emergent pedagogical priorities of community and resilience. We discuss how community-based approaches and resilience-building may contribute to a redefined Maker Education implementation and pedagogy, revitalizing its original principles and vision based on Constructionism.

Our impulse / underlying question:

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Background & Aim

Why Recenter Maker Education Now?

Technocentric Maker Education risks losing its pedagogical roots.
Shift toward meaningful, community-driven and resilient practices.

Aims?

Understand how educators reframe Maker Education using constructionist values.
Reclaim the pedagogical depth of Constructionism.

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Research Design

Methodology at a Glance

8 semi-structured interviews; 60–90 min interviews
STEAM teacher trainers, maker educators, school leaders; New England, USA
Diverse expertise: creative coding, fabrication, STEAM PD
Focus: pedagogical shifts, challenges, emergent practices
Ethical approval

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Limitations of the Study

Small sample size (n=8) limits generalizability of findings.�
Participants were based in New England, USA, which may not represent global practices.�
The pedagogical priorities identified—community and resilience—are not new, but their emphatic emergence in our interviews testifies to their renewed significance in the evolving context of Maker Education.
Designed in order to generate material / points of inspiration that we could bring into less “efficient” makerspace education contexts. It was designed to boost & inform the maker-educator community in "the periphery."

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Emergent themes in discussions among maker-educators

Theme 1: From Technocentrism to Community Connection�Theme 2: Iterative Resilience as a Pedagogical Priority

Other themes:

Maker-spaces for Emotional and Social Learning: Recognizing the emotional labor of making (e.g., persistence, frustration).
Space as Pedagogy: Attention to how the physical and social design of makerspaces shapes learning.
Assessment Challenges…
Cultural and Systemic Barriers to Maker Education
Scaling and Institutional Resistance: how to embed maker-mindsets within existing curricula and policy frameworks.
Maker-teacher culture
K-12 outreach from universities
“Offering the constructionist experience”
…

Digital making is making
Changing the educational system through collaborations that invite change from within from within
Community embedded
the Ministry of Education is not easy to convince about reforms.
“if you build it, will they come”
Baking change in the DNA of the school.
Ingredients for change: startup energy and a consistent energy
“If you don't have that, even the best and most well-intentioned teachers will revert to sameness”
How projects may introduce elements but may fail to change the culture: “following the instructions on the board”
It is not only the technical training, but also the pedagogical training i.e., how are they doing things differently, and how to get support when things don't go well, whether that's a community of practice or some sort of school leadership.
Support for teachers when things don't go well: community of practice or some sort of school leadership.
Assessment of innovative teaching may not be immediately documentable with traditional test stores
Three ways to change schools: total, incremental & “Fridays only”, and challenges for each
“Getting through the Valley of change”
Community holding
School leadership
Challenges according to policy: US vs India
Educational Philosophy (private schools) “Inside the Box”: “to just put people in middle management jobs”
Need to change educational outcomes: some students will go on to good colleges, not all, but ALL will be prepared to do amazing things in life. This is the shift in educational philosophy that we need.
I think there's like a spectrum of where people can come in and where teachers might be comfortable, and students might be comfortable, but I think absolutely a big goal of a lot of the work we do is about empowering people to have the constructionist experience,

Our students are constantly working and they are happy, they love learning. They don't want to leave at the end of the day. Their transformation is an amazing thing to see.
The most important skill that our graduates have is that if they don't know something, if they are faced with something they don't know, they'll figure out how to know it. And if it's watching YouTube to teach themselves, or to ask figuring out who to talk to, it's such a lovely sort of skill. It’s about the student experience and really, giving room, giving space to students to, to tap into their agency and to use it. They gotta make good decisions and everybody makes mistakes.
when it's a very well established traditional school and the head of the school wants to bring change, the design education that we're implementing with training a traditional teacher can be rocky because a traditional teacher suddenly has to give up the knowledge and all of the answers. Because teenagers are all generating ideas and an idea is never wrong. It might be potentially misguided or not fully fleshed out, but helping teachers understand that you're sort of handing over the reins to students. I would say, it's been a true challenge for us that our curriculum and our school is very unstructured.
The best way to learn is by making mistakes and you're constantly, “oh, that's not the shape I wanted”. Or “that's not how I wanted this”, continuing to go through that. Yeah, to figure out exactly how it needs to be…
The “do not fail” is a terrible element. I think the American white privilege, parenting, trend is just ... Careful, careful, careful, don't. Where are you? Don't leave my side. Don't! Solving problems for their children…

If you try to build something and it doesn't work. That's not a failure, if you learnt from it. If you don't try, that's failure.

A: Teachers don't know how to use tools. They don't get the ethos. They don't know how to make value out of these spaces for the learners.
hey graduate. And they're still working on the project. But they are engaged for as long as they're here. Then, they go off and they do whatever they do. Um, you know the alumni… Students who were in the solar power club are now out doing other things. But you know, they check in, the ones who graduated and have only been away for a year or two, they might do consulting. And if these alumni are successful, often they will make contributions back to the team. We do recognize that it's a student team, it's student driven. And if you have alumni who hang around and are very active, it shifts the culture.
There is so much open-source material. There is no longer a need to develop materials from scratch, develop activities, and connect them to the curriculum. There are numerous examples of good work in these communities. But i still see a lot of energy being spent on the first steps, and then there is no time left for scaling up and impact. (see A’s answer below)
A: Quick field tips to makerspaces and quick activities with students just to see what the laser does, will not leave them with any true skills. Rather, this practice creates a bad reputation for the lab or initiative, right?
we're very interested in is people’s emotional and social well-being. Being able to express yourself, through different kinds of tools and mediums. And even if these students don't end up going on to the STEM field, if you can, at least feel confident around tools and feel confident around coming up with ideas and not being afraid of failure, those are human skills that will help you in every kind of area. And that's another thing that we're trying to focus our attention on in the coming future. How do we quantify
they're still working out how that's going to integrate their makerspace within the school. So, do they have maker classes? Do they have project time? I think they're figuring this out as they go.
“if you build it, will they come”
Even after training, some teachers will not buy in “this learning by doing” idea,
And we have another example. Those are not baked into the DNA of the school, those are a variety of schools with a variety of priorities and constraints and, you know, non-overlapping teacher time and the realities of that. How to think from a teacher perspective about using makerspace, not the Makerspace pulling the teachers in, you know what I mean, it can be a combination of the two, but the teacher mindset is important. Why am I changing what I've done for X number of years? How is this going to be disruptive? What do I have to do? All the fears that come in, along with the excitement, right? I think there's the reality of addressing that. Everyone who's thinking about maker education, you know, has these same challenges.
There's both a startup energy and then there's a consistent energy and I think one of the things we found with some of the work that we've done is you need both. If you don't have the energetic mindset shift, start pulling energy into the system, and why are we doing this? you can't get started. But if you only have that, then people go to a professional development and they're inspired and all that and then they don't have the support throughout and the system, which just pushes them back into sort of the same old - same old. And even the best and most well-intentioned teachers will revert to sameness. So I think, particularly, if the school doesn't have a value for what they're doing, then…
if the school doesn't show value for those teachers making the effort and for the outcomes that are happening, it'll very easily either just get discarded or they'll just use the new tools, but some in the way that basically they were teaching before so it doesn't actually change the culture.

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Theme 1: From Technocentrism to Community Connection

“What allows for collaboration to happen is, like, do people feel seen? Do they feel heard? Do they feel safe?”

“Here, people feel excited about the work. They feel fundamentally respected by everyone there.”

“Once kids feel it’s theirs, they start teaching each other.”

“It’s not about the tools, it’s about the relationships we build around them.”

“How do you get this kind of community to start?’

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“Being (1) a community-holder and trainer versus being (2) a functioning institution working with students-- These two roles require different skills and different attention and I think it can fail because people are often not skilled in one of the two. And doing a little bit of both can suck all the energy out of other things. It's very hard.”

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“Community” consistently came up in our interviews as the secret ingredient to successful Maker Education programmes, eclipsing other priorities.

We identify a desire for more adaptable, inclusive, and welcoming environments.

What does this mean for Maker Education learning design?

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On the pedagogical priority of building and sustaining community

Designing for collaboration, dialogue, mentorship (also peer-to-peer mentoring), co-creation, co-ownership, flow, ritual, sense of belonging, conflict transformation [starting with modeling / optimising the above in our own teams]*
Shifting emphasis from tools and technologies to relationships and shared purpose,
Embedding makerspaces in local, contextualized ecosystems (sustainability),
Designing projects* grounded in real-world problems, especially environmental and community issues. Site/community-specific problem-solving,
Makerspaces as ecosystems of belonging and trust,
…

From Technocentrism to Community Connection

The importance of community emerged as a dominant theme in the interviews, with participants consistently highlighting that successful Maker Education programmes depend far more on cultivating a sense of belonging and shared purpose than on the availability of cutting-edge tools. One interviewee observed, “It’s not about the tools, it’s about the relationships we build around them.” Community—whether referring to a community of practice involving various stakeholders in Maker Education or a collaborative peer learning environment—was central to the participants’ vision of effective Maker Education. Without a doubt, proficiency with digital technology is as fundamental as traditional literacy in today’s world (Papert, 1999) as acknowledged by the participants. Yet, effective makerspaces are characterised by shared goals, mentorship, and collaboration, transforming them into hubs of innovation and mutual support.

The centrality of community in pedagogy has long been recognised as a foundation for effective and inclusive education. Wenger (1998) conceptualised communities of practice as groups that share a domain of interest and collectively engage in learning, underscoring the role of social interaction in knowledge construction. This aligns with Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of social constructivism, which posits that learning occurs within social contexts through interactions with peers and mentors. In Maker Education, these principles are amplified, as collaborative learning fosters shared purpose and mutual support (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). Furthermore, Freire’s (1970) pedagogy of the oppressed emphasises the transformative power of collective agency, advocating for participatory and dialogic approaches that empower learners to engage critically with their environment. The significance of community also extends to equity and inclusion, as Noddings (1984) argued for an ethic of care in education, where relationships form the basis of meaningful and supportive learning environments. In Maker Education, embedding community-centric practices ensures that learners not only acquire technical skills but also develop interpersonal abilities and a sense of belonging, which are essential for holistic development. By integrating these pedagogical frameworks, Maker Education transforms from a technocentric model to a human-centred approach that prioritises collaboration, connection, and shared growth.

Participants also stressed that community-centric practices ensure broader access and equity in Maker Education. By embedding makerspaces within local contexts and tailoring activities to community needs, educators can create inclusive environments that empower diverse learners. This aligns directly with constructionist principles by prioritising shared learning experiences and fostering collective growth.

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Theme 2: Iterative Resilience as a Pedagogical Priority

“The school system teaches us to give away our locus of empowerment. A failure, a rejection or a low grade can destroy a person. And this is conditioned. Because people aren’t naturally like that. People are naturally playful.”

Iterative Resilience AS a Pedagogical Priority

Another key theme was the prioritisation of resilience as a core pedagogical aim. Resilience in this context is not about enduring adversity in isolation but fostering a mindset of persistence, adaptability, and collaboration. Participants described how designing iterative processes—where failure is normalised and seen as an essential step in learning—builds learners’ confidence and problem-solving abilities. One participant noted, “If students learn to embrace failure as part of the journey, they become more innovative and less afraid to tackle complex challenges.” Awareness of the value of iterative resilience in Maker Education is deeply intertwined with established pedagogical theories offering a multidimensional framework for fostering adaptability, creativity, and persistence. Central to this concept is the growth mindset, which posits that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning from failure (Dweck, 2006). Complementing this is grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, which underscores the importance of sustained effort in achieving mastery (Duckworth, 2016). Experiential learning provides the cyclical foundation for iterative processes, emphasizing learning through reflection on doing and experimentation (Kolb, 1984). Manu Kapur (2008), coined the term ‘Productive Failure’ to describe a learning design where students attempt to solve complex problems before receiving direct instruction, leading to initial failure but ultimately resulting in deeper understanding and better learning outcomes. Reflective practice deepens this learning cycle by encouraging critical examination of one’s actions to refine future strategies (Schön, 1983). Collaborative learning further enriches iterative resilience by embedding it in a social context, enabling learners to navigate challenges collectively (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). Finally, self-regulated learning equips individuals with the tools to plan, monitor, and adapt their own learning processes, reinforcing the independence necessary for iterative growth (Zimmerman, 2002). Together, these interconnected theories provide a robust pedagogical foundation for embedding iterative resilience in Maker Education.

Participants also highlighted the role of educators in modelling resilience. By openly sharing their own iterative processes and demonstrating how to learn from setbacks, teachers can create safe spaces for experimentation. These practices establish resilience as a shared cultural value, reinforcing collaboration and mutual support.

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“[B]ut it's this opportunity to fail that opens up the door for the next steps [...] because the path to creativity is fundamentally iterative. [It’s about] getting away from the idea of a right or wrong answer [because] no matter how capable you are, if you have a different way of thinking about it and you're getting it wrong, you internalize that you really aren't that good. And then it shuts down your creative way of thinking about a problem.”

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Reflective loops, safe risk-taking,
Learning through trying, failing, reflecting, and iterating: “We’ll keep failing better until it works.”
“It’s not one shot. It’s many small pivots.”
Educator modeling: “Our job is to show how we fail and come back better.”
Failure is a fundamental part of the journey, not a flaw.
Designing for persistence, adaptability, experimentation.
Designing learning environments that foster grit, reflection, and collective problem-solving.

Designing for Resilience: Practical Strategies

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Early implementations of Maker Education often prioritised the tools and physical spaces rather than pedagogical outcomes. By re-centering constructionist ideas of creativity, iteration, and human connection, our findings regarding contemporary discourse and priorities among maker-educators demonstrate how community-centric practices may transform makerspaces into inclusive ecosystems of collaboration and growth.

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Um, and on that cage wall, there are all these bits and pieces of old projects and to get your project on the wall, it has to have broken and you have to learn something from [it] breaking and that's the ethos, right? If you try to build something and it doesn't work. That's not a failure, if you learnt from it. If you don't try, that's failure. “

“And on that cage wall, there are all these bits and pieces of old projects and to get your project on the wall, it has to have broken and you have to learn something from [it] breaking. And that's the ethos, right? If you try to build something and it doesn't work, that's not a failure, if you learnt from it. If you don't try, that's failure. “

Photograph by Andri Ioannou (2024) MIT Edgerton Center

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On the significance of Community for Resilience�

Pedagogy of support
Shared responsibility for iteration
Establish resilience as a shared cultural value
Shared failure fosters trust and innovation
Community makes iteration safe and meaningful
Transformative learning happens when we fail together

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Take outs

Listening to the choir!
Inspiring the less “efficient” periphery of the makerspace ecosystem / revitalising the constructionist movement through autoethnography and discourse analysis?
Community as a fundamental pedagogical priority towards productive failure and iterative resilience,
Makerspaces & maker-communities as ecosystems of belonging and trust,
Watch this space…
Gratitude

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Andri Ioannou, PhD

Professor CUT, EdMedia Team Leader

Research Interests:

Educational Technology, Technology Enhanced Learning, Learning Design

Chrystalleni Loizidou, PhD

Research Associate, Cyprus University of Technology &

Brno University of Technology

Maker Education, Learning Design, Tech Education Policy

Sonia Andreou, PhD

Research Associate

Research Interests:

User Experience Design & Research, EdTech

Eleni Pashia PhD

Research Associate

Research Interests:

User Experience Design & Research;Interdisciplinarity, Co-design, Design Thinking,Inclusion

Eirini Christou, MA

Research Assistant, EdMedia

Research Interests:

Technology and education, emerging technologies

Stephanie Papalla, MA

Research Assistant

Research Interests:

Architecture, Design Thinking EdTech

Aikaterini Mavri, PhD

Assistant Professor CUT, EdMedia Affiliated Member

Research Interests:

Social/situated Learning,

Technology Enhanced Learning,

Antigoni Parmaxi, PhD

Senior Researcher CUT, EdMedia Affiliated Member

Research Interests:

Computer assisted language learning, participatory design methodology in language learning,

in the context

of contemporary constructionism