Throughout the past decade, the maker movement has become a cultural force, and maker-centered learning has grown in popularity. At the same time, the arts have remained marginalized throughout the educational sphere and limited scholarship recognizes the connections between the maker movement and arts learning. To explore this connection, Agency by Design researchers Sarah May and Edward P. Clapp conducted a thematic analysis of interviews with maker educators and thought leaders, and discovered that these educators rarely used arts and aesthetics-related terminology when speaking about the benefits of maker-centered learning. In this article, they suggest that establishing a language of aesthetics in maker-centered learning might help arts and maker educators see themselves reflected in one another’s work.

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