MAKE.THINK.TINKERING. An exploratory study of Tinkering pedagogy and its perceived added value in primary and secondary schools

Tinkerers are not makers, designers, techies, or artists. They are a healthy mix of the four, taking pleasure in repairing, inventing, upcycling and remixing. They throw open old appliances to find out how something works, see a gigantic pile of possibilities when they browse in a thrift shop and, above all, are not averse to overpowering a technique they may not yet have mastered. They are not professionals, but hobbyists with a curious nose for the world around us and hands itching to get to work. Actually, we are all a bit tinkerers. As human beings, we are curious and inquisitive creatures, exploring the world around us by grabbing things, moving them, adapting them, trying them out or improving them.

With this motto, the Tinkering Studio at the science museum Exploratorium in San Francisco has been focusing on that learning with your hands since 2009. Visitors get to work there with marble tracks, simple electric circuits or wind turbines. Tinkering thus becomes a method to actively engage visitors, let them investigate independently and learn to think 'out of the box' together.

This playful way of discovering and researching is slowly but surely starting to make inroads within education. Those who already use it can list the advantages: pupils actively engage in inquiry-based learning, enter into spontaneous dialogue with each other and feel their ownership is addressed. As a teacher, you make time for yourself to observe the pupils in a more focused way and you can be surprised by their ideas and perhaps still unexplored talents.

Another advantage: the material you use for this is often simple, cheap or has been discarded by colleagues or family members. If you attend a tinker activity, you might see participants taping large sheets of cardboard together, sewing pieces of fabric to teddy bears with iron wire or breaking open a toy robot with a hammer.

Tinker activities are therefore by definition hands-on: participants are invited to get to work and play with materials and constructions. The activities come across as messy, playful and crazy, provoking interaction and inventiveness. Not everything goes as planned: there is no overall defined specific goal and it sometimes seems to come from 'the gut'. A hearty dose of self-reliance and entrepreneurship is therefore no stranger to tinkerers.

During the Make.Think.Tinkering study, the researchers set to work with 12 teachers from six schools to test the methodology against the Flemish educational field. After a coaching programme on the university college campus, the teachers set up their own projects and activities. Their experiences were tested through structured interviews. The processing of the interviews was checked against literature and the researchers' own experiments.

For three years, Arteveldehogeschool and a number of primary and secondary schools investigated how to get started with Tinkering in the classroom.

The project ended at the end of 2019, but you can download all didactics, tips & tricks and examples via the link below. Have fun and good luck!