NSF Awards: 2005898
Making spaces are fruitful spaces for STEM learning toward equity because they foster critical creative inquiry: interest-driven, collective, and community-oriented learning in making for social and community change.
The Critical Making and Equity Research Coordination Network, funded through AISL, is aimed at magnetizing equity-oriented research that centers making cultures and practices of historically marginalized groups.
The network encourages sharing of knowledge and resources to incubate emergent inquiry across multiple working sites of practice. Members in the network are invited to pursue common research questions to facilitate cross-collaboration across a multiplicity of making spaces, research institutions, and community organizations throughout the country to share data, methodologies, ways of connecting to local communities and approaches to robust integration of STEM skills and practices.
The network is working forward to map the range of making cultures and practices that reflect norms and values borne from particular intersections of social (including racial, gendered and classed), political, geographical and economic dimensions.
Chip Bruce
Professor Emeritus
Your project addresses a critical need, both to help educators understand making in general and to emphasize equity-based making more specifically.
Do you know of the work at Karkhana in Kathmandu? I've been working with them and impressed with what they're doing in very low resourced settings?
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hi Chip,
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, in fact, we do know Karkhana! One of their members (Dipeshwor Man Shrestha) is a graduate student of one of our steering committee members (Brian Gravel) and took a design-based research class with Beth Warren, Maria and I.
One of the goals of our project is to highlight the ways people already engage in making, highlighting the ingenuity of those folx in low-resource settings. Right now we are focused on US locations, but hope to expand internationally once we get a solid footing here. By bringing together researchers working at these intersections, our network aims to build the knowledge base for a critical, expansive vision of STEM participation. We will be opening up for recruiting researchers and practitioners such as yourself, very soon. Stay tuned! - eli
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
If you are a researcher in equity-oriented making settings you can take this survey and join our network here: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1FzQyELmQswZrAV
Chip Bruce
Professor Emeritus
It's great to see all of these (sometimes unexpected) connections. I do know Dipeshwor, and have worked with, and am a good friend of, Beth Warren.
You might enjoy seeing another example from Nepal: https://chipbruce.net/2019/02/22/a-personal-mak...
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Definitely a cool car!
Donna Ross
I love the emphasis on creative, critical inquiry with joy and choice. What a beautiful and welcoming presentation.
Veronica Oguilve
Graduate Student Researcher
Thank you Donna! Those are very essential elements in our work.
Nancy Staus
Senior Researcher, STEM Education
It is so important to expand the notion of maker spaces beyond robots and 3D printers! Can you share more about the research practice partnerships you are developing in this project? how are partners recruited and what is their role in the research?
Sasha Palmquist
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Thanks so much for sharing our vision of an expansive view of making. The research team is in the process of building our website that will share more details of our project and how to get involved. We're planning to convene online and also in person (if and when that's possible) to share ideas, seed future research, and pool research data for more impact. We're recruiting partners as active participants to build this network's vision and extensions. Partners' role in the research is as an active participants in sharing expanded visions of making and to offer their stories and illustrative examples. Other goals are drawn from partners' identified needs and priorities. Looking forward to getting in touch with any interested participants who find us through this venue.
Emmanuel Nti-Asante
I am happy to join. I work in more of this and STEM
Shihadah Saleem
Sr. Manager of Youth Leadership and Alumni Programs
Your research is so intriguing and wonderfully expansive. Can you share the intersectionality between maker and entrepreneurship, especially as it relates to black-owned businesses in support and equity in crafting?
Sasha Palmquist
Maria Olivares
Research Assistant Professor
Hi Shihadah! LOVE this question! CRAFT takes the stance that entrepreneurship thrives in minoritized communities--whether it is recognized as such in today's world of start-ups and rapidly advancing digital technologies. Entrepreneurship, such as in Black-owned businesses, signifies the making of something that's aimed at meeting the needs of the local community. Black-owned businesses are a collective community-based endeavor that only thrives through mutual support between business owners and their customers/neighbors.
My parents make and sell street food in South Central Los Angeles. They are self-sufficient and able to keep meet their needs. They can rest their feet any time they find the need. They are experts in their craft and are able to earn a living wage not DESPITE their intersectional identities, but BECAUSE of them. Entrepreneurship is where folks can stand in their power and make big things happen by drawing on skills, talents, and sensibilities shaped by their intersectional existence.
I would LOVE to continue this conversation more fully!
Shihadah Saleem
Maria Olivares
Research Assistant Professor
If you'd like to learn more about the CRAFT Network and how to get involved visit our website at www.CRAFT-Network.org
Eli Tucker-Raymond
John Fraser
Wow, what an impressive undertaking for such a limited budget given the indirect at all of your universities. It must require substantial volunteer work to make this happen. Glad to see you're accomplishing all of this.
Monica Cardella
Thank you for your work on this project, and for creating this video to share this work & invite others in!
Martin Storksdieck
What a wonderful idea to craft an RCN around equitable making. Will the "cultivate" and "sustain" stage expand what this emerging community will develop to the broader making community? In other words, what is your plan to reach beyond the choir in order to expand the choir?