Tinkering to Opportunity
Increasing Access, Equity, & Opportunity for Early Childhood Education Students
Child Development Students’ diagram of a phone take apart activity. Photo Credit: Gordon Schrenk
When our Child Development Program decided to add lab spaces to our early childhood education teacher training program, we knew that we wanted to do something different. Our curriculum emphasizes developmentally appropriate practice with young children and the importance of play and discovery for learning. Many of our professors were already doing innovative activities such as improv, intensive art studies, and cooking demonstrations and we wanted to build a space that would that would give them freedom to explore, the tools to demonstrate best practices for teaching young children, and the flexibility to grow with the needs of our students and our program.
After researching local museums, public schools, and private business we decided that the type of space that would give us the freedom and flexibility we needed while opening up opportunities for our educators was an early childhood focused makerspace.
What’s in a Name?
The Tinkering Lab contains a variety of tools & materials for students to work with. Photo Credit: Gordon Schrenk
Faculty and staff had the benefit of being able to be involved of the building of our lab space from the ground up. We supported decisions about the use of space, the technology, the tools, and even which direction the tables should face. This process took about nine months and when it was completed, we realized we would to have to name the new lab space!
We settled into a long debate about the language. Is it a fab lab? Well, we didn’t plan on manufacturing a product. Is it a makerspace? Well, not exactly, with our programs focus on play and unstructured activities, we knew the focus on making things wasn’t right for us.
We decided what we had was a Tinkering Lab. The naming was significant because it captured our ideas and dreams for the space: a lab because it was a place for real hands-on experimentation and tinkering captured our desire to make the space a safe one for playing, trying and failing, and working without a specific goal in mind.
How the Tinkering Lab Supports Early Childhood Educators
Offering found & scrap materials shows students tinkering can be done without a big budget. Photo credit: Gordon Schrenk
We want our educators to leave our program with the ability to try new things in the classroom, observe carefully, and to decide what does and doesn’t work. This process of scientific observation and careful iteration aligns beautifully with the art of tinkering.
As a community college, the majority of our students are “non-traditional” and are primarily women of color. We find that they have not had the same access to math and science curricula, to tool use, and to hands on exploration that their traditional and white, male student counterparts have had. We also knew that in order for our students to do dynamic, hands on activities with young children, they were going to have to be comfortable doing them themselves. The Tinkering Lab became a safe space in which everyone can try, fail, and try again. We built that sense of security through careful design of the lab, decorating it with empowering quotes and images, specialized faculty training and support, and through building supportive relationships with our students, our faculty, and our surrounding communities. Much of what we had to do was to undo negative stereotypes; women don’t build things, children cannot be trusted with tools, educators can learn through demonstration instead of working with their hands.
Stretching our Expectations
The Tinkering Lab has become a safe space for students to try, fail, and try again. Photo credit: Gordon Schrenk
We started having our faculty slowly introduces the students to the Tinkering Lab for one or two class sessions this Spring. We found that the Tinkering Lab was connecting with our curriculum and providing experiences for our students that were beyond what we had hoped. We found that students who did not speak during class were able to participate fully in tinkering activities. Women who had never worked independently with tools were enthusiastically (after some initial coaxing) breaking, fixing, and making things of their own. Students whose first language was not English were able to express their ideas and plans for projects in alternative ways. One of our students, who owns her own home daycare business and had never considered using tools or tinkering with young children, supported the children at her internship to build their own playhouse using real power tools!
Most importantly, we were able to provide for our early childhood education students the types of experiences we hope that they will provide for the children in their care and to show them the value of those experiences.
I have submitted a proposal to hold a hands-on “Tinkering to Opportunity for ECE Teacher Prep” workshop at SXSW EDU. Support me by sharing this story and voting for me on PanelPicker.
