Instructional design and teaching that fosters meaningful engagement in disciplinary practice in a Maker project on projectile-motion

Abstract

This study contributes to the growing body of work on integrating Making into science education by examining how an open-ended projectile-motion design challenge can foster meaningful disciplinary engagement in physics. We report on an intervention that integrated an extended Making project into the learning of physics at the advanced high school level in the 10th grade. The intervention (18 academic hours, spread over 4 weeks) was videotaped, and post-activity interviews with selected students (5 out of 18) were conducted. We use these data to discuss how instructional design and the interaction with the facilitating teachers fostered the emergence of students’ engagement with core physics practices that organically emerged from their engagement in Making. We highlight key design considerations, how the tradeoff between openness and structure was negotiated and resolved, the teachers’ facilitation strategies and their discursive moves. We also offer practical guidance for educators seeking to support authentic disciplinary learning in Makerspaces without sacrificing students’ creativity, freedom, and ownership.