Designing (and) making teachers: Using design to investigate the impact of maker-based education training on pre-service STEM teachers

This qualitative study examined how a maker-based education workshop affected 20 pre-service STEM teachers’ views of the lesson planning process. Design is used as both an epistemological link between making and teaching practices as well as an analytical lens through which lesson planning could be interpreted and understood. The findings of this study suggest that pre-service teachers who have been introduced to maker-based principles and practices are able to imagine a lesson planning process that is more student-centered and active than the kind which they normally utilize. While there was a contrast between the content of making-based and traditional lesson planning processes, the pre-service teachers’ designs of these processes were largely the same: linear, verbal, and only occasionally reflective or iterative. These characteristics match those of novice designers.