Steam learning in an in-school makerspace: the role of distributed spatial sensemaking

This study examines technology-enhanced STEAM learning among fifth and sixth grade students in one set of in-school makerspaces. It focuses on the learning of one set of meta-disciplinary skills, spatial skills. Prior research has shown these skills to be relevant for STEAM achievement, but they have been underemphasized in our schools and in the literature on learning through making. Informed by a distributed cognition perspective and using a combination of qualitative categorical coding and interaction analysis, this study provides a learning sciences approach to studying spatial thinking and learning. Analyses show that during making activities students engaged in frequent and diverse spatial thinking with a variety of social and material resources and that the sociomaterial contexts of different making activities facilitated different types of spatial thinking. They also show that spatial thinking developed over time and led to problem-solving insights.