In this post, we present how REA collaborated with UNICEF and the Ministry of National Education of Turkey, to foster creativity and innovation for high school students all around Turkey through school makerspaces, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the constructivist — constructionist paradigms and STEM education continue to gain traction in the education ecosystem, adoption of fabrication workshops as learning environments has been a popular trend throughout the world for at least a decade. Stemming from the worldwide phenomenon called “maker movement” in DIY/arts & crafts space, this trend in education has lead to establishment of “makerspaces” in schools, libraries, youth centers and universities where young people combine modern design, programming and production means with traditional handcrafts to implement personally meaningful projects.
One of the recent major initiatives of the Ministry of National Education of Turkey is to establish makerspaces in all public schools in all levels (grades 1 to 12). The rationale behind this initiative is to expose students to a kind of curriculum that promotes making, interacting and mastery instead of a curriculum to cater to instructionism and standardized testing. In addition to equipping adolescents with skills of the new era, these school makerspaces will also play a very significant role in lowering the number of students with non-attendance issues and those with early school leaving problems by providing conducive learning environments.
As our experience in different large scale education initiatives, success depends on whether teachers, parents and students embrace and support it. Success lies in not how well-built and equipped are the makerspaces but whether the students were provided with an environment where they can express themselves creatively without the fear of failure or grading. Also teachers should be supported in this new domain where the traditional pedagogical approaches that they are used to will be counter-productive.
The Ministry of National Education of Turkey and UNICEF have been in a long term collaboration in order to strengthen the Turkish education system and support the development of vulnerable children of Turkey. As one of the fruits of this collaboration, design and development of creative educational activities and extensive teacher professional development was planned to support the use of the newly established school makerspaces mentioned above.
In 2020, Rea was chosen by UNICEF to realize this important assignment. Within the assignment, a Teacher’s Handbook is developed which contains 50 original interdisciplinary creative educational activities, to be implemented in the school makerspaces. Moreover, cascading Training of Trainers (ToT) for more than 500 teachers were realized for the teachers in the pilot schools, on how to best utilize the school makerspaces as a learning environment. Finally, national and provincial strategies and action plans are developed for better dissemination of makerspaces in schools.
You can view the handbook via this link: http://ogmmateryal.eba.gov.tr/panel/upload/etkilesimli/kitap/tda/index.html
In specific, the following activities were realized and outputs were developed by Rea:
1. Visual Arts and Traditional Handicrafts,
2. Music,
3. STEM and STEAM,
4. 3D Design and Fabrication,
5. Robotics,
6. Software Development,
7. Electric and Electronics
8. Drama - Performance Arts
9. Woodworking,
10. Cinema and Photography,
11. Interpersonal Communication and Personal Development.
In this assignment, Rea had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for one of the most important and extensive education initiative in the recent years. As a bonus, we were very happy when we saw that our work was recognized promoted by then-minister of MoNE Mr. Ziya Selcuk!