In this paper we discuss what are the possible presumptions and benefits of combining principles, methods, materials and approach from the maker movement into education. Maker movement, and maker culture is defined as a field or a community that promotes and shares science, technology, art and craft based on creating or tinkering of devices, objects and ideas. Makerspaces, especially in libraries grow very fast in many schools recently. It all demonstrates a partnership between two very complementary fields, education and maker culture, but we lack theoretical discussions about links between very nature between learning and making processes in contemporary world. Main argument in this paper is that contemporary education lacks engagement and focus that can be found in making. This presumption also withdraws rethinking the way we see children and their role of students, it withdraws the way we see power dynamics in classroom and a very aim of educating.

Issue that we are trying to address in this paper is found in standards driven pedagogy that becomes futile of learning, development and emancipation, and serves only to neoliberal logic. The paper is theoretical discussion in which we combine maker movement principals to what we know about learning/teaching process in socio-constructivist theory, progressivism, critical pedagogy and postmodernism. From that analysis we withdraw conclusions about how to rethink learning and educating in order to make it more filled with agency and more change provoking. Therefore we propose introducing these principles to the classrooms: learning by doing; not problems but solutions oriented approach; free sharing of knowledge; playfulness or seeing classrooms as playgrounds for body and mind; employing metacognitive aspects of coding; collaboration among different generations and other social groups; learning by mistaking; opening the space in curricula for the knowledge of oppressed; cultural means no longer should be seen as just tools but as materials; classrooms as spaces of creation and change. In conclusion we make several guidelines how to transform classrooms into makerspaces and subversively start changing educational practice slowly in the entire institution.

Facio ergo cogito - I make, therefore I think

Firstly we will describe two problems that set stage for our arguments. First one is the way education is conceptualized or theoretized today and the other one is its part in the society.
In a standards driven society, we have standards driven pedagogy and now it becomes a standard driven understanding of the quality of teaching/learning process. It is an economic concept applied to a field that should be defining itself (Todd, 2016). First victims of standards and testing culture were higher order cognitive processes. Highest on a Bloom’s revised taxonomy are processes such as analyzing, evaluating and creating (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), but those processes, and especially making and creating new contents are not very testable, at least not in a traditional paper and pen testing approach. This is why those processes slowly fall into shadow of more trivial and simple processes that are easier to test. Many scientists (Apple et al, 2009; Apple, 2006; Liessmann, 2006;) concluded that we need to rethink how we understand the processes laying in a heart of education, and those are learning and change.

Secondly, for the most parts of our planet inevitability of economic laws became, inevitability in educational streams contributing to deepening inequalities (McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2005; Žiru, 2011). Education stopped giving optimism to the oppressed (Apple et al, 2009;  Freire, 2008; Freire, 1975, UNESCO, 2013, 2014). It is exactly where the progressive movement as makers' contributes. 

In our approach, we combine discourses of maker movement with theories of teaching/learning and overall education. This paper is a review of discourses used in these two, searching for the spaces where those fields entangle. Based on this analysis we withdraw conclusions about what is a maker friendly educational space. Long time ago progressivism in education and John Dewey made a paradigm shift with proclaiming learning by doing maxima. For him and his ancestors learning needs to be attached to life, to have a full meaning in everyday children activities outside of schools, it needs to start from children’s interest and it needs to be active. In manipulating with things children become part of a big world of meaning, physical activity stimulate mental representation and this activity starts living as mental activity as well (Dewey and Bentley, 1960) but it is clear that language of making is universal and archetypical for all humans. And freedom of thought is in a dialectical relation to a freedom of act (Dewey, 1941) which is also something we find inherent to making. Perhaps our generations have tools for almost everything, but learning how to use it is just one step, the real peak in this learning process is making new tools and creating meanings attached to them. It is repeated many times among educators that scientific mind is very close to child’s mind as also Dewey used to say (1910) that mind is imaginative, playful, experimentative and curious. Especially curiosity is stressed by many other authors (Brown and Patte, 2013) as a key force of learning and development. These processes are often find as missing in education but are very easily nurtured in making, where every tool becomes material and materials are transformed into tools. We know that learning is interactive in its nature, and it is social and coconstructive, and it has many levels of cognitive depth. So is making. In making one interacts with culture, previous and current cultural tools and knowledge built in it. One interacts with others very intensively in maker movement because for different solutions, there are so many ways of reaching it, and different skills are needed so artist might need some ICT knowledge or chemist would need some craftswomen’s knowledge. It is a most natural aspect of making - iterativity but we all know it is still not so natural aspect in our classrooms.

Thinking and learning without making is such a futile action. Futile in terms of ideas, futile in terms of potency for a change and futile of emancipation. “Lessons learned from the grassroots spreading of the “maker movement” can help us reimagine schools and foster a mindset of creativity and innovation in educational settings” (Peppler and Bender, 2013). If a making movement can introduce materials for students to literally shape and create figures of speech in the physical form, or circuit stickers and conductive tape to construct their poetry together with their families or neighbors (Smay and Walker, 2015) then the lesson is clear: keeping the best from education we have is just the first step. But than the way actors in education are assessed becomes obsolete and must be transformed, if the learning/teaching practice is upgraded in making manner, then assessment should be too. It brings us to the assessment that is process oriented and adapted to children with very diverse background and different educational needs. Assessment forms teaching, and teaching forms learning, with right change on the beginning this dialectical circle will sustain itself afterwards. And by transforming any learning space into makerspace could go in this way: firstly understand your learners, asses existing curricula, programs and offerings in the community, consider global trends and best practices, develop themes, provide equipment and materials (Kurti et al, 2014 [2]). Educational makerspaces are based on students’ ownership of their learning, and it is not necessary to be a technical expert to start a mekrespace in your school or library (Kurti et al, 2014, 11[1]). Only thing necessary is yours orientation toward collaboration, sharing, problem solving, learning by mistaking and playing with being capable to see everything in the classroom as a material.

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition. New York: Longman. Anderson, C. (2012). Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. New York: Random House. Apple, M. W., Ball, S. J., Gandin, L. A., (2010). The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education. London: Routledge. Crawford Barniskis, S. (2014). Makerspaces and Teaching Artistis. Teaching Artist Journal. 12 (1), 6-14. Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Chicago: D. C. Heath & Co Publishers. Dewey, J. (1941). Education today. London: George Allen & Unvin Ltd. Dewey, J., Bentley, A. F. (1960). Knowing and the known. Boston: Bacon Press. Dougherty, D. (2013). The maker mindset. In M. Honey & D.E. Kanter (Eds.), Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM innovators. New York, NY: Routledge. Freire, P. (2008). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1975). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguine books. Helfrich, J. (2014). Creative Spaces: Flexibile Environments for the 21st- Century Learner. Knowledge Quest. 42 (5), 76-78 Kurti, R. S., Kurti, D. L., Fleming, L. (2014) [1]. The Philosophy of Educational Makerspaces. Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals, 41(5), 8-11. Kurti, R. S., Kurti, D. L., Fleming, L. (2014) [2]. Practical implementation of an educational Makerspace. Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals, 42 (2), 20-24. Liessmann, K. Paul. (2006). Theorie der Unbildung. Die Irrtümer der Wissensgesellschaft, Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag. Martin, L. (2015). The promise of the maker movement for education. Journal of Pre/College Engineering Education research, 5 (1), 30-39. McLaren, P., Farahmandpur, R. (2005). Teaching Against Global Capitalism And The New Imperialism. A Critical Pedagogy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefiel Publishers. Piaget, Jean. (1973). To understand is to invent: The future of education. New York: Grossman Publishers. Plemmons, A. (2014). Building a Culture of Creation. Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals, 41 (5), 12-16. Rosenfeld Halverson, E., Sheridan, K. M. (2014). The Maker Movement in Education. Harvard Education Review. Cambridge: Harvard Education Publishing group. 84 (4), 495-504. Todd, S. (2016). Facing uncertainty in education: Beyond the harmonies of Eurovision education. European Educational Research Journal, 5 (6), 619-627. UNESCO (2014): UNESCO’s Participation In The Preparations For A Post-2015 Development Agenda Overview Of Goals And Targets Proposed, Paris, 2014. Žiru, A. (2011). O kritičkoj pedagogiji. Beograd: Eduka.