Educator Tatum Omari examines the system of educator collaborations and partnerships.
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Field NoteUnderstanding Agency Part II: Putting an Abstract Concept into Action
Understanding Agency Part II: Putting an Abstract Concept into Action
AbD researchers describe how their use of agency “vignettes” help them gain new understandings around the concept of agency.
thinking routinesParts, Purposes, Complexities
Parts, Purposes, Complexities
This thinking routine helps learners slow down and make careful, detailed observations by encouraging them to look beyond the obvious features of an object or system. This thinking routine helps stimulate curiosity, raises questions, and surfaces areas for further inquiry.
publicationsComplicating STEAM: A Critical Look at the Arts in the STEAM Agenda
Complicating STEAM: A Critical Look at the Arts in the STEAM Agenda
This entry offers a critical perspective of the role of the arts within the popular STEAM agenda. Most loosely defined, STEAM can be understood as incorporating the arts into the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) acronym for the purpose of introducing a focus on art and design into these four subject areas. This entry first questions what the A in the STEAM acronym actually represents. The entry then argues that a focus on any discrete set of disciplines prioritizes some domains of practice, while overlooking others. The entry goes on to encourage a more distributed approach to pedagogical practice that is less about establishing catchy acronyms that privilege some disciplines over others – and more about supporting young people and adults in becoming multimodal learners capable of making connections between and beyond the disciplines.
Field NoteCuriosities, Collections, and Curating: Considering Maker Portfolios
Curiosities, Collections, and Curating: Considering Maker Portfolios
AbD researcher Jessica Ross elaborates on her role in the Open Portfolio Project by asking the question: What advice can we offer young makers as they document their making throughout their lifetimes?
Field NoteTaking Apart to Build Stories of Change
Taking Apart to Build Stories of Change
This piece is based on a workshop titled “Taking Apart Racism: Using Maker-Centered Practices to Break Down Systems of Oppression,” led by Jaime Chao Mignano and Mark Perkins at the National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference (PoCC).
Like a lot of educators, I want my students to be empowered to impact the world around them. I want them to have social and political agency in a sense that is perfectly aligned with what Agency by Design means by agency—that is, skills and tools in combination with intention and impulse to action. When I task my students with dismantling systems of oppression, how do they know what that means? Do they feel ready to enact it? And how can I be a support?
This was the seed of a workshop for this year’s National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference (PoCC), a gathering of thousands of educators from around the United States to explore ideas and share experiences around equity and justice in our schools and lives. My colleague, Mark Perkins (Media and Theater Coordinator), and I wondered what insights we could offer by putting Take Apart practice in service to racial justice education. I was nervous to try to build under the conference throughline “Anti-Racist Teaching Tools” - the stakes felt so high. We had an inkling, though, that combining the enthusiastic engine of taking stuff apart with the resonant act of creating stories that reimagine existing narratives of power could be an important experiment.
Mark and I built a workshop we call “Taking Apart Racism: Using Maker-Centered Practices to Break Down Systems of Oppression.” The heart of the workshop is the idea that looking closely and exploring the complexity of an object can create a bridge of metaphor that helps us understand a system of racial oppression. If we build the connection between these two systems—the system of the object and the system of oppression—then we can see the oppressive system in a new light and probe new possibilities.
videosThe Maker Mind: Jen Ryan at TEDxDirigo
The Maker Mind: Jen Ryan at TEDxDirigo
Agency by Design researcher Jen Ryan explores some of the central ideas from the framework at TEDxDirigo Generate.
activities and practicesVoice and Choice: Learner Workbook
Voice and Choice: Learner Workbook
This Learn Workbook supports engagement with the Voice and Choice protocol. Created by Julie Rains.
thinking routinesPlaying Around With Roles
Playing Around With Roles
Engaging young learners in exploring complexity and finding opportunities to make systems better requires perspective taking and empathy. Role playing can be a powerful approach to support learners in taking others’ perspectives when exploring the roles, ideas, and feelings of different characters in a system. Here we offer a few thoughts on how to leverage children’s natural desire to play and how to employ different thinking routines to foster perspective taking and empathy. This tool is intended as a starting point and does not need to be followed step by step or happen all at once.