Methods for examining the educational pathways of adult makers

This paper presents our methods for examining the educational pathways of adult Makers. Through critical incident interviews and artifact elicitation interviews of a segment of Makers collected at Maker Faire events, we seek to develop a theory based on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and pathways of Makers to inform future innovations in formal engineering education, specifically in the areas of practical ingenuity, creativity and lifelong learning of our future engineers. Our primary research questions are: (RQ1) What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do Makers possess that could be related to engineering? and (RQ2) How do pathways of Makers intersect with engineering? The focus of this paper is to convey our methods for this work.