The AbD Making Moves are a set of observable or actionable “moves” that learners and educators can use to help design maker-centered learning experiences, and to support, observe, document, and assess maker-centered learning.
Agency by Design researcher Jen Ryan explores some of the central ideas from the framework at TEDxDirigo Generate.
This entry offers a critical perspective of the role of the arts within the popular STEAM agenda. Most loosely defined, STEAM can be understood as incorporating the arts into the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) acronym for the purpose of introducing a focus on art and design into these four subject areas. This entry first questions what the A in the STEAM acronym actually represents. The entry then argues that a focus on any discrete set of disciplines prioritizes some domains of practice, while overlooking others. The entry goes on to encourage a more distributed approach to pedagogical practice that is less about establishing catchy acronyms that privilege some disciplines over others – and more about supporting young people and adults in becoming multimodal learners capable of making connections between and beyond the disciplines.
Welcome to the new Agency by Design website! Because the new website is so rich with content and features, we think it might be helpful to take you on a tour to get a sense of all it has to offer. The new site boasts 29 educator tools and practices that accompany the Agency by Design framework for maker-centered learning, featured documentation and assessment resources highlighting the most recent phases of work, Agency by Design media and publications, and project and funder pages to highlight the Origin Project, Early Childhood in the Making, and Making Across the Curriculum. The video below walks you through the elements of the site and gives an overview of each page.
This thinking routine helps learners slow down and look closely at a system. In doing so, young people are able to situate objects within systems and recognize the various people who participate—directly or indirectly—within a particular system.
In this essay, leaders of the Agency by Design Pittsburgh network Peter Wardrip, Jeffrey Evancho, and Annie McNamarra describe their process of pursuing documentation and assessment strategies for maker-centered learning that are based on the values educators bring to their work in schools and other settings. Using the metaphor of big rocks and little rocks as introduced by Steven Covey, the authors describe the process of identifying one’s values and documenting and assessing student learning from the perspective of one’s values. They then articulate the lessons they have learned and their suggestions for moving forward. The core findings that emerge from this work are: (a) identifying one’s values is challenging, (b) documentation requires practice, (c) one’s values are linked to one’s content, and (d) visibility supports measurement.
These conversation-starters help learners become sensitive to the presence of the Making Moves in their own and others’ learning. They also help learners have substantive conversations about the Making Moves with their peers.
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.
This practice is designed to deepen learners’ sensitivity to design through drawing, observing, questioning, and collaborating.