Research
The objective of our research was to adapt, implement, and refine a professional development program focused on supporting informal educators’ instructional practices on ways to plan for and respond to youths’ experiences with failure will have a positive impact on developing participants’ pedagogical practices around failure, as well as developing youths’ affinity for resilience during making tasks and a strong sense of self as a maker.
Aim 1
Investigate features of the professional development models that best support lead facilitators in supporting informal educators in attending, interpreting, and responding to youths’ experiences with failure while engaged in making tasks.
Our research highlights the following:
When examining video clips of failure moments and interactions with youth and/or adults, educators are more often attending to their own pedagogical failures in how they support or hinder youth and/or adults experience through the failure moment. They are less likely to attend to the failure of the prototype or technique.
Regardless of why the video clip was selected, educators are more often to provide positive feedback to one another as opposed to constructive suggestions as to how to improve their pedagogical practices around youth's failure moments.
Through engagement in the PD cycle, educators reflected more on self
Aim 2
Investigate informal educators’ pedagogical practice around youths’ experiences with failures through engaging in the professional development models.
Our research highlights the following:
Educators use a range of pedagogical practices to support youth's iteration through failure. Examples include encouraging observation, elicit student thinking about their design, assigning competence as engineers and/or makers, and inviting continuous testing.
Educator failure pedagogical practices are aimed to either promote persistence or avoid opportunities for negative emotions.
Novice educators shifted how they perceived their role - from facilitating youth’s failure moments to stepping back and providing youth more opportunities to make their own decisions when experiencing failure moments (i.e., agency).
Educator desire to support student-directed projects and problem solving are often in tension with the reality of limited educator-student contact time and the perception of parental expectations. Therefore, fully embracing failure as a pedagogical ideal is risky in light of their context.
Aim 3
Examine shifts in youths' resiliency and perception of failure.
Insights from our partners highlight the following:
Top three "unstuck" methods included ask a friend, change their plan, and use a different tool. Least three "unstuck" methods included take a break, take time to learn a new skill, and change materials. (Montshire Museum of Science)
Skills youth practiced the most or grew the most, or felt important to your work or process included (a) find a solution to challenges; (b) come up with new ways to do, try, and think about things and problems; and (c) recognize that when things don't work, you have learned about the tools, materials, or process. (Bakken Museum)
Aim 4
Analyze shifts in perspectives on failure and struggle of lead facilitators and informal educators.
Our research highlights the following
Museum educator’s framing of failure are bounded, and transformed, by un/seen external forces (e.g., implicit rules and norms, visitors’ perspectives of failure) that ultimately impact the professional practices of educators in their organizations.
Example frames include Failure as Finite and Fearful, Failure as an Invisible Hand, Failure as One Step in a Journey, and Failure as a Shared Endeavor.
Research Team Members
Photo: Jonathan Cohen, Binghamton University
Amber Simpson
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education, Binghamton University
One of my research interests is to understand the role of making and tinkering in formal and informal learning environments. This includes how to support the pedagogical practices and perspective of educators around moments of failure. More recently, this research has extended to the nature of embodied mathematical failure.
Alice Anderson
Manager of Audience Research and Impact, Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)
Alice studies what people think, feel and learn through informal learning experiences. She develops and implements program evaluation and audience research initiatives to understand Mia’s audiences, educational programs, exhibitions and social impact. She has led evaluations and research studies of digital media resources, maker education programs, and professional development programs and in formal and informal learning.
Adam Maltese
Professor of Science Education and the Martha Lea and Bill Armstrong Chair in Teacher Education at Indiana University
At the IU School of Education, Adam directs the MILL Makerspace and the Uplands Maker Mobile. His research focuses on ways we can get youth interested in STEM and engaged in problem solving - including what happens when failure occurs.
Additional Research Team Members
Andrew Osterhout
Binghamton University
Dara Caruana
Binghamton University
Kelli Paul
Indiana University
Lauren Penney
Indiana University
Qiu Zhong
Indiana University
External Evaluation
Monika Mayer, MA
Principal and Founder of Monika Mayer Consulting
Monika is the external evaluator of the project. She brings a rich background in designing, directing, and teaching educational programs as well as developing exhibits with a focus on creating innovative learning environments that foster collaboration, creativity and deep engagement. She supports museums around making and tinkering spaces, family and community engagement, professional learning communities and evaluation.
Publications
Simpson, A., Osterhout, A., Anderson, A., Maltese, A. V., & Ruisi, J. (Under Review). Co-construction of iteration through failure moments: Interactions between museum educators and visitors. Visitor Studies.
Simpson, A., Anderson, A., Goeke, M., Caruana, D., & Maltese, A. V. (Under Review). Identifying and shifting educators’ failure pedagogical mindsets through reflective practices. British Journal of Educational Psychology.
Simpson, A., Anderson, A., & Maltese, A. V. (In Press). The ups, downs, and potentials of implementing video clubs in museums. Journal of Museum Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2022.2146366
Simpson, A., Osterhout, A., Anderson, A., & Maltese, A. V. (Under Review). Museum educators perspective of failure: A collective frame analysis. Curator: The Museum Journal.
Presentations and Workshops
Anderson, A., Todd, KT., Adisa, Z., & Simpson, A. (2023). Found poetry methodology. Presentation at the annual meeting of the Visitor Studies Association: Virtual.
Folwer, C., Daniels, K., De La Paz, D., Spencer, J., Phillips, A., Benedetti, M., & Price K. (2023). Empowering informal educators to support learners during moments of struggle in making and tinkering activities. Full day workshop at the annual meeting of the Association of Science and Technology Centers: Charlotte, NC.
Maltese, A. V., Anderson, A., Simpson, A., & Penney, L. (2023). Failure + making = learning? A workshop for researchers and evaluators. Half-day workshop at the Play Make Learn Conference: Madison, WI.
Maltese, A. V., Anderson, A., Simpson, A., & Penney, L. (2023). Supporting learners through failure during making: A workshop for maker educators. Half-day workshop at the Play Make Learn Conference: Madison, WI.
Mayer, M., Simpson, A., Anderson, A., Maltese, A., & Penney, L. (2023). Failure in Making (FiM) – Supporting the professional development, reflection and learning of informal educators. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Science and Technology Centers: Charlotte, NC.
Osterhout, A., Simpson, A., Anderson, A., & Maltese, A. V. (2023). The failure-learning process in informal museum education: A multiple case study. Paper presented at the annual research meeting of the American Educational Research Association: Chicago, IL.
Mayer, M., Maltese, A., Waldrip, P., Martin, K., Cage, L., & Spencer, J. (2021). Finding the benefit in failure: Supporting professional development, reflection, and learning of informal educators. Presentation at the annual Association of Science and Technology Centers.