Seeking Languagelessness: Maker Literacies Mindsets to Disrupt Normative Practices

Abstract

This article challenges an over-reliance on language as the primary means to communicate knowledge by adopting a languagelessness approach to maker pedagogies and maker literacies. Having conducted makerspace and design-based research for some time, we separately and together noticed a productive relationship between wordless relational makerspace and making moments focused on craft, tools, technologies, and materials, and ways that an absence of verbal and written communication opens possibilities within learning environments. After meetings and discussions, we co-wrote the article to examine ways that language-light, even language-free pedagogical spaces allow for a different quality of design work that motivates and fosters innovation. There are three international research projects that serve as research vignettes to investigate the efficacy of languagelessness. The theory foregrounded to anchor and interpret the three vignettes draws from maker literacies research and sociomaterial orientations to knowledge development.