Living with tools, animals, plants and materials in makerspaces: a dwelling pedagogy on sustainability, work and education

When people come together in Fab-labs, repair cafés or makerspaces, it goes without saying that they can acquire all kinds of competences in the so-called STEAM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) and that they can also experience a transformative learning process about, for example, their responsibility to contribute to a sustainable coexistence on our planet. More specifically, these are places or breeding grounds where people are addressed as makers and not as consumers; where work materials, knowledge and ICT are available to everyone and where learning and making are linked. During my sabbatical, I want to both broaden the research on ‘makers education’ (we also prepare food, grow vegetables in a community garden, etc.) and deepen it by making visible a third form of pedagogy that is also active within these makerspaces. This concerns a pedagogy that encourages people to pay attention and care for who and what is present in that place. It is pedagogy that stimulates a sensitivity to the way in which both human and non-human actors shape the inhabitation of that place and the work that is required for this. The aim of this sabbatical research is both a theoretical and empirical substantiation of this 'living ecology' of maker education (in addition to a competence- and transformation-oriented pedagogy). This research will result in at least two manuscripts in which both crucial theoretical and empirical methodological dimensions of the research into this third form of maker education are specified. The specific form of these manuscripts has yet to be determined (e.g. scientific article, scientific essay, a maker manifesto, etc.). For this sabbatical research, we also plan a long-term practical research in two makerspaces in Flanders.