Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds - Softcover

The Essential Guide for Implementing Maker-Centered Teaching and Learning

"The world doesn't need more graduates with good grades: What the world needs is voracious, self-directed learners with the creative capacity to see the problems of the world as puzzles, and the tenacity to work on them, even in the face of adversity."
—Gever Tulley, founder of the Brightworks School in San Francisco, California

Maker-Centered Learning offers educators and administrators a theoretical framework and a hands-on guide for navigating the burgeoning field of marker-centered teaching and learning. Written by a team of experts from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero, this important resource identifies the core educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the essential concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design.

The text explores the key characteristics of the educational environments and instructional designs under which maker-centered learning thrives, and describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity. In addition, the authors identify the kinds of educational interventions that can support thoughtful reflection around maker-centered learning and the made dimensions of our world. Designed to be flexible, the framework for maker-centered learning presented by the Agency by Design team can be applied in a variety of environments.

If we are to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what it means to be truly educated, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere learning takes place.

EDWARD P. CLAPP, Ed.D., is Co-Director of Agency by Design and a Research Associate and Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

JESSICA ROSS is a Senior Research Specialist at Project Zero and current Project Manager of Agency by Design.

JENNIFER O. RYAN is Project Manager of the Pedagogy of Play project, and former Project Manager of Agency by Design.

SHARI TISHMAN, Ed.D., is Co-Director of Agency by Design and a Senior Research Associate and Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.