This journey has made me very optimistic about the future of Making in education. In general, I found the members of this community to be very welcoming and encouraging to one another, which was refreshing to see in the technology world. However, before this movement can be used to help address the diversity crisis in STEM I think the leaders of this movement need to do more to show the many faces that make up this community.
Gender and race had little to no effect on identity within the online community. When looking for female role models I turned to blogs and larger scale publications like Make to find inspiration. Unfortunately, these sources usually just served as a reminder that I was a female trying to navigate a very white male dominated world. If the maker community is as diverse as they claim to be, then they need to start showing it. And I mean that quite literally.
Dr. Leah Buechley, an Arduino developer and former associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, discussed this issue in a Keynote address at the Third Annual FabLearn conference at Stanford University in 2013. In this presentation, she said “the movement has grown large enough and influential enough that it’s time to turn a critical eye to the culture and the community and think about what we really want it to be and what it actually is.” Her issues stem from the fact that our definition of the word “make” is too closely tied with the for-profit business Make Media. She believes that their definition of a maker and what constitutes making is too narrow, and I could not agree more.
At the time of her keynote, Make had produced 36 issues over the span of 9 years. Over these 9 years, they have focused on a very narrow scope of traditionally masculine themes. Table 3 shows the themes that came up on the Make covers.
| Table 3
Make magazine cover themes |
|
| Theme | Percent of covers |
| Electronics | 53% |
| Vehicles | 31% |
| Robots | 22% |
| Rockets | 8% |
| Music | 5% |
| Source: Buechley, 2013 | |
Of the 36 covers that Buechley examined, 40 people were featured. 85% of the covers featured males, 15% featured females, and 0% featured people of color. The editorial staff for Make at the time reflected similar stats; of the 15 editors, 87% were male, 13% were female, and 0% were people of color (2013). As one of the leaders in this movement, this lack of diversity is problematically limiting our definition of this community, implying that white men and boys are the only people who make things. I agree with Buechley’s challenge to Make Media. They can do better, and it is there responsibility to do so.
Vincent Purcell, a teacher and maker whose work focuses on social and environmental issues, has similar concerns. Purcell argues that, “to truly realize the ethos of an open-source, democratic community, we need to educate those most in need, highlight role models who look as diverse as we as humans are, and shift power to underrepresented people who themselves can design and build appropriate solutions to critical social challenges” (2015).
After experiencing the Maker community first hand, I have remained optimistic about the movement and its potential to help us reimagine STEM education in the U.S. This movement is already helping to break down access and affordability barriers, and its foundations in openness and sharing is promoting collaboration across disciplines and encouraging people of varying skill levels to work together. However, it is hard to imagine what you cannot see. If the leaders of the maker movement can begin to show the many faces that make up this community, then I think we can attract a more diverse group of people. Makers are stronger together, and if we can diversify the making community I think we will be well on our way to rebranding STEM.
Sources
Buechley, L. (2013). Closing Keynote. [Presentation]. Presented at the Third Annual FabLearn conference at Stanford University. Stanford, California. Retrieved from http://edstream.stanford.edu/Video/Play/883b61dd951d4d3f90abeec65eead2911d
Purcell, V. (2015, November 18). What the Maker Movement Needs to Learn. Impact Design Hub. Retrieved from https://impactdesignhub.org/2015/11/18/what-the-maker-movement-needs-to-learn/