This routine helps students explore complexity by encouraging them to look closely at the details of something, considering its various viewpoints, users, and stakeholders, and reflecting on their own connections and involvement with it.
Esta rutina de pensamiento ayuda a los estudiantes a ir lentamente y observar detallada y cuidadosamente, al animarlos a mirar más allá de las características obvias de un objeto o sistema. Esta rutina de pensamiento estimula la curiosidad, plantea preguntas y hace evidente otras áreas para continuar la investigación.
Educator Tatum Omari examines the system of educator collaborations and partnerships.
The Agency by Design Inquiry Cycle has been designed to support educators in the processes of designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting on maker-centered learning. This tool was collaboratively developed over time, and formally prototyped with cohorts of maker educators in two locations: Oakland, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this paper, Agency by Design researchers Jessica Ross and Edward P. Clapp loosely use the structure of the Inquiry Cycle to describe the iterative process of developing this tool, along with some suggested implications for practice. Throughout the piece, we share the experiences of our teacher partners as they grappled with this tool—tweaking, hacking, and remixing it—as they explored its potential for designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting upon their work in the maker-centered classroom.
The practice of mapping allows learners to build and demonstrate their understanding of the parts, people, and interactions that comprise a given system.
Mechanical dissections are a practice that allows learners to discover the often hidden design of objects.
This practice is designed to deepen learners’ sensitivity to design through drawing, observing, questioning, and collaborating.
Agency by Design project manager Jen Ryan examines the use of the word maker and offers an alternative reframing for an emerging field.
Agency by Design research assistant Sarah May explores the complex nature of working with qualitative data based on her experiences collaboratively coding and analyzing AbD’s interview transcripts.