In the second of four posts presenting findings from the Makerspaces in the early years (MakEY) final report, Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross, and Paige Mustain investigate how educators view parents roles within these spaces, and how the physical set up of the spaces encourage parents’ interaction.
In our previous post wrapping up our findings from the MakEY project, we considered the different roles that parents played within makerspaces. We discussed the variety of roles parents adopt, inspired partly by studies by Barron et al. (2009) and Brough et al (in a forthcoming volume on Connected Learning) who determined that parents take on distinct roles as ‘learning’ partners in helping children develop technological skills. In our MakEY project we also found that instead of a contrast between engaged versus disengaged parents, we found that their roles were…
