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This exploratory study compares how young people (ages 15-16) learn circuitry concepts and layout design principles important to electrical engineering using one of two educational circuitry toolkits: paper circuits and traditional solderless breadboards. Paper-based prototyping kits are representative of a trend that incorporates new materials and approaches to integrating arts into traditional STEM disciplines. Extending prior research on how non-traditional toolkits enhance learning of electrical engineering outcomes, including basic circuitry concepts (i.e., current flow, polarity, and connections), this study examines the material affordances and design choices of the kits that contribute to youth's understanding of more advanced circuitry layout design principles, including space allocation, placement of electronic components, and routing. Results indicate that paper circuits better afford the learning of layout design principles for printed circuit boards (PCBs) with large effect sizes. This study illuminates how the materials of educational toolkits uniquely solicit body- and material-syntonic patterns of activity, and thus differentially engage learners' powerful ideas around circuitry and design principles. This investigation encourages careful consideration of the material affordances of some toolkits over others for learning purposes.

Out-of-school time (OST) makerspaces are spaces for youth to engage in exploratory practices and deepen STEM interests in personally meaningful ways. Many youth—especially teens—additionally benefit from supportive relationships (e.g., caring adult mentors, peer mentors) in these spaces to help them uncover their interests and translate them into long-term trajectories of maker practice. Using a connected learning lens, this paper focuses on supportive adult relationships at a high school OST program (Sunrise of Philadelphia), and the ways in which practices around interest identification and development within its makerspace entrepreneurship program meaningfully impacted learning trajectories for youth by connecting them to new STEM opportunities, knowledge, and experiences. Through an illustrative case study, we present a portrait-of-practice that shows how OST educators facilitated brokering to connect youth to resources, mentoring, materials, and new communities that transcended their specific program. This manuscript contributes to known practices for translating youth interests in makerspaces, including incorporating youth voice and choice and making cultural connections to entrepreneurship opportunities. This case contributes to an understudied area of entrepreneurship education programs and activities that are needed in educational (K-12) makerspaces.

Traditional reviews of arts education have focused on why the arts are valuable for learning, but the arts' contributions to cross-disciplinary discourse remain undertheorized. In this article, we provide a theoretical review of the arts and learning to suggest a new way of thinking about how the arts contribute to learning across disciplines through a focus on the production of artifacts. Guided by a sociocultural constructionist view on learning, this review brings together research from across the field of arts education to demonstrate the benefit of policies that support the production and engagement of shareable artifacts. Findings are synthesized through what we name an "artifact-oriented learning model," which merges constructionism with ecological systems theory. Our review points to two key pathways of learning through the arts (i.e., making and engaging) and suggests the arts support learning that is multimodal and transactive across settings. Thus, we consider arts education policy as part of a sociocultural process that has rippling effects across disciplines for all layers of a social ecology. Given this orientation, implications for researchers and policymakers are discussed to support decision-making and continued inquiry across arts education research and policy.

The maker movement advocates hands-on making with emerging technologies because of its value for promoting innovative and personally meaningful transdisciplinary learning. Educational research has focused on settings that primarily serve youth from dominant groups, yet we know surprisingly little about making among minoritized youth and the kinds of resources that support their making. This study sought to better understand the extent to which maker practices are present in the lives of minoritized youth and the network of resources that support their engagement. In this study, we analyzed survey responses of 52 youth from an urban, under-resourced community in Chicago and conducted an inductive thematic analysis of 20 interviews through a model of connected learning. Findings showed these youth participated in a diverse range of interest-driven, low-tech maker activities in their own homes more often than in school, after school programs, or through online resources and communities (i.e., YouTube, Internet, social media). Many youths displayed different levels of participation with intergenerational support, as parents and extended family members supported youth in their hands-on making. This work opens up pathways for fostering connected learning opportunities within minoritized communities by building on existing learning experiences within home settings and supportive relationships.

This review brings together scholarship from creative educational experiences (CEE) and connected learning to describe a connected arts learning framework, reframing arts education in the 21st century with a focus on connecting youths’ interest-driven art making to opportunities through supportive relationships. Such a framework pushes the arts education field to consider outcomes beyond artistic skill acquisition and academic achievement to include a broader range of opportunities, including those civic- and career-related; promote interest development through targeted exposure to new forms of art making; create and implement professional development and programming to emphasize networks and connections; and draw from culturally sustaining practices to bridge connections between spaces for learning. A connected learning lens applied to what we know about high quality arts education sharpens our focus on how CEE can cultivate equity and social/cultural connection for youth.

Connected learning explains how people can build learning pathways that connect their interests, relationships, and formal learning to lead toward future opportunities such as careers. However, most learning systems are not set up ideally for connected learning; for instance, most schools still teach disciplines as discrete units that do not connect to students' interests outside of school. We do not yet know enough about the structure of naturally occurring connected learning ecologies that do connect youth learning across contexts and help them follow pathways toward careers and other desired outcomes. Learning more about what works well on these pathways will allow us to design connected learning environments to help more youth have access to these desired opportunities. This paper analyzes two case studies of cosplayers--hobbyists who make their own costumes of media characters to wear at fan conventions--who benefited from well-developed connected learning ecologies. Cases were drawn from a larger interview study and analyzed as compelling examples of connected learning. Important themes that emerged included relationships with and sponsorship by caring others; unique pathways that start with a difficult challenge; economic opportunities related to cosplay; and comparisons with formal school experiences. This has implications for how we can design connected learning ecologies that support all learners on unique pathways toward fulfilling futures.

Purpose: In contrast to traditional portfolio practices that focus on the individual, this paper aims to reenvision portfolio practices to encompass sociocultural aspects of learning by considering how young makers, both in- and out-of-school, imbue digital cultural practices into the documenting and showcasing of their work, as well as observe the extent to which their portfolios are used to build community inside and outside their local settings. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing from a connected learning approach, the authors engaged in qualitative and ethnographic study of youth's digital maker portfolios in an out-of-school and a school-based makerspace. Through qualitative and thematic coding of portfolio walkthroughs, the authors identified four underlying characteristics within portfolio artifacts (i.e. personal and shared projects) and capturing practices (i.e. personal and shared capturing practices) that differently presented projects. Findings: The analysis showed that portfolios that included shared productions and shared portfolios (i.e. projects and portfolios contributed to by more than one youth) and that were shared in open-ended ways across communities valued connected learning principles. These connected portfolios made community building within and beyond maker-educational communities of the young makers possible. In particular, openly shared and collaboratively captured work showed individual achievements (e.g. projects and techniques) and made visible connective and social engagement (e.g. opportunities for feedback and refinement, possibilities to narrate work to multiple audiences). Originality/value: This paper has implications for the design of portfolio assessment in makerspaces and expands the role of portfolios as a way to capture individual and cognitive achievements alone toward connected community-building opportunities for youth as well as maker-centered settings within and beyond the youth's local maker-centered settings.

Purpose: Science museums provide a context for developing and testing engineering activities that support visitors in creating personally meaningful objects. This study aims to propose that narrative design elements in such engineering activities can foster empathy to support engineering engagement among girls ages 7-14. Design/methodology/approach: Taking a constructionist approach to engineering design, the authors present results from an observational study (n = 202 girls) of engineering activities across three museums that were designed to foster girls' engineering engagement by integrating narrative elements aimed to foster empathy in activities. Using quantitative counts from observation protocols, the authors conducted statistical analyses to explore relationships between narrative, engineering and empathy. Findings: Linear regression demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between empathy and increased numbers of engineering practices within museum activities. Additionally, this led us to explore the impacts the potential narrative design elements may have on designing for empathy -- multiple linear regressions found both narrative and empathy to be independently associated with engineering practices. Overall, the authors found that using narrative to design activities to elicit empathy resulted in girls demonstrating more engineering practices. Originality/value: The authors offer design ideas to foster aspects of empathy, including user-centered design, perspective-taking, familiarity and desire to help.

Aligning crafts and activism, "craftivism" provides a useful context to study the processes of collective socio-political activism. Crafts allow us to reclaim the ability to care for others as a method of activism, which stands in contrast to the vitriolic expression that pervades contemporary online-offline political discourse. Building on connected learning, this qualitative study analyzes the #quiltsforpulse movement, a response to the 2016 mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando that distributed over 1,700 handcrafted quilts to survivors, families, and first responders. We study the craftivist connections and shared practices of #quiltsforpulse and one implementation of the movement that produced material responses to violence. Findings broaden our understanding of connected learning by introducing how materials produced multifaceted connections and shared practices in the collective expression of care and compassion. We present implications for designing connected learning opportunities toward socio-political activism.

The move to remote learning in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic presented design challenges for teaching and learning. Though research is emerging on teacher adaptation during the pandemic that documents challenges and the perspectives of stakeholders, the field is lacking close descriptive accounts that illustrate what classrooms looked and felt like. We followed teaching artists as adaptive experts who designed responsive and emotionally safe spaces for students during the transition to remote learning. Our exploratory study was guided by the following research questions: (1) How did teaching artists design for teaching and learning during the pandemic? (2) What can be learned from teaching artists in responding to extraordinary circumstances moving forward? We found that teaching artists designed for online learning through centering relationships and resourcefulness, providing emotional support, cultivating introspection and empathy, expanding what counted as arts practice, and including families. We end with implications for research and practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced educational inequities that pose unprecedented challenges for teaching and learning. Scott Sikkema, Jenny Lee, and Joseph Spilberg of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) and Maggie Dahn, Nickolina Yankova, and Kylie Peppler of the University of California, Irvine, explain how the arts, which are often relegated to the margins of the curriculum, can help transform disruptions like those brought about by the shift to distance learning into unique opportunities to create more open and equitable learning models. They describe how CAPE's open and inquiry-oriented approach to arts-based pedagogy enabled them to rethink teaching and learning in ways that changed the relationship between teachers and students and gave students more ownership of their learning.

As an emerging field of theory, research, and practice, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) has received attention for its efforts to incorporate the arts into the rubric of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning. In particular, many informal educators have embraced it as an inclusive and authentic approach to engaging young people with STEM. Yet, as with many nascent fields, the conceptualization and usage of STEAM is somewhat ambivalent and weakly theorized. On the one hand, STEAM offers significant promise through its focus on multiple ways of knowing and new pathways to equitable learning. On the other hand, it is often deployed in theory, pedagogy, and practice in ambiguous or potentially problematic ways toward varying ends. This paper attempts to disentangle some of the key tensions and contradictions of the STEAM concept as currently operationalized in educational research, policy, and practice. We pay particular attention to the transformative learning potential supported by contexts where STEAM is conceptualized as both pedagogical and mutually instrumental. That is, neither STEM nor arts are privileged over the other, but both are equally in play. We link the possibilities suggested by this approach to emerging theories for understanding how designing for and surfacing epistemic practices linked to the relevant disciplines being integrated into STEAM programs may point the way toward resolving tensions in inter- and transdisciplinary learning approaches.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore what design aspects can support data visualization literacy within science museums. Design/methodology/approach: The qualitative study thematically analyzes video data of 11 visitor groups as they engage with reading and writing of data visualization through a science museum exhibition that features real-time and uncurated data. Findings: Findings present how the design aspects of the exhibit led to identifying single data records, data patterns, mismeasurements and distribution rate. Research limitations/implications: The findings preface how to study data visualization literacy learning in short museum interactions. Practical implications Practically, the findings point toward design implications for facilitating data visualization literacy in museum exhibits. Originality/value: The originality of the study lays in the way the exhibit supports engagement with data visualization literacy with uncurated data records.

Augmented reality (AR) is a unique, hands-on tool to deliver information. However, its educational value has been mainly demonstrated empirically so far. In this paper, we present a modeling approach to provide users with mastery of a skill, using AR learning content to implement an educational curriculum. We illustrate the potential of this approach by applying this to an important but pervasively misunderstood area of STEM learning, electrical circuitry. Unlike previous cognitive assessment models, we break down the area into microskills--the smallest segmentation of this knowledge--and concrete learning outcomes for each. This model empowers the user to perform a variety of tasks that are conducive to the acquisition of the skill. We also provide a classification of microskills and how to design them in an AR environment. Our results demonstrated that aligning the AR technology to specific learning objectives paves the way for high quality assessment, teaching, and learning.

Prior literature has begun to demonstrate that even young children can learn about complex systems using participatory simulations. This study disentangles the impacts of third-person perspectives (offered by traditional simulations) and first-person perspectives (offered by participatory simulations) on children's development of such systems thinking in the context of the emergent complexity of honeybee nectar foraging. Specifically, we worked with three first-grade classrooms assigned to one of three conditions--instruction through use of a first-person perspective only, third-person perspective only, and integrated instruction--to engage ideas of complex systems thinking. In each condition, systems concepts were targeted through instruction and assessment. The integrated and third-person classrooms demonstrated significant gains while the first-person classroom showed gains that were not statistically significant, suggesting that third-person perspectives play a critical role in how children learn systems thinking. This work also puts forth a novel assessment design for young children using multiple-choice questions.

While circuitry lessons have traditionally been first introduced in late elementary school, they remain challenging conceptually for undergraduates in physics and engineering courses. Seeking to provide a higher quality and earlier introduction to circuitry learning for young children (ages 3-5), this paper investigates the affordances of utilizing the Squishy Circuits toolkit, a circuitry kit that combines circuit components and playdough, as a first introduction. Our study engaged 45 children across three nursery school classrooms in open-ended play with Squishy Circuits toolkits for seven sessions over a period of 2 weeks. Here, we focus on six children in one focal classroom in order to illustrate the concepts that children are developing during play and open exploration with the kits and a range of crafting materials. Findings indicated that the Squishy Circuits toolkit enabled children to explore concepts important to circuitry learning, including current flow, polarity, and connections. Additionally, analysis of whole class conversations before and after the circuitry explorations indicated significant gains in children's ability to discuss circuitry concepts over the course of the study. Through individual case studies, we illustrate how children enacted these concepts through their play and how the transparency afforded by the toolkit make the big ideas of circuitry visible. This work serves to illustrate how very young children can successfully begin to engage with science topics commonly introduced in later elementary school when those topics are framed through play and discovery with transparent and malleable materials.

Celebrating hands-on making and technological inventiveness, the Maker Movement promotes the popularity of new makerspaces: learning environments filled with diverse materials for youth's creative projects. Described as "constructionist learning environments," makerspaces can be challenging to design because materials require substantial budgetary investments. Because the practical demands of space and cost often dominate decisions concerning a new makerspace, less attention is paid to how the choice of materials inadvertently limits who uses the space, how learning happens, or how materials in a space will interact and intra-act over time. Building on theories of constructionism and relational materialism to analyze and theorize learning in makerspaces, we take a case-based approach to illustrate the co-development of 3D printing materials, youth and educational programs at an out-of-school makerspace. In the process, we demonstrate the need to rethink the role of materials in human development and educational design. We introduce the concept of "materials-to-develop-wit"h to explain how objects can be internalized "and" drive the development of spaces, people and learning opportunities.

Recent advances in arts education policy, as outlined in the latest National Core Arts Standards, advocate for bringing digital media into the arts education classroom. The promise of such Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM)-based approaches is that, by coupling Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and the arts, new understandings and artifacts emerge that transcend either discipline. Evidence of this can be seen through fundamental shifts in both fields; in the arts, artists are expanding the creative potential for design through computational flexibility, which affords artists the ability to exceed the limitations of their tools. The infusion of the arts into STEM has shown to be equally transformative, with the emergence of tools and communities that not only engender new content understandings but also invite participation from populations historically underrepresented in STEM fields. Drawing on over a decade of research at the intersection of the arts, creativity, and new technologies from the Creativity Labs at Indiana University, this article theorizes the learning that takes place at effective couplings of STEAM to assist today's educators in realizing the potential for transformative experiences for learners of all levels. This article provides a synthesis of this past work across two compelling cases of STEAM-based tools, materials, and activities (i.e., the media-rich programming environment Scratch as well as the work the LilyPad Arduino used to create electronic textiles), incorporating findings from more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and books, and conceptually outlines an approach to "gathering STEAM" in arts education classrooms today. Implications are explored for policy makers in teacher education to think about preservice curriculum and field experiences; policy makers in arts education to think about tools needed in classrooms today; as well as how art education can play a critical role in STEM disciplines and offer solutions to address STEM pipeline challenges. Such efforts extend current and prior discussions in the arts education landscape about the use of new technologies, and draw our attention to how new technologies can be leveraged for artistic expression.