Exploring Teachers' Understanding of Collaborative Learning and Teamwork Strategies in Makerspaces

Abstract

Makerspaces are interactive learning environments that provide students with opportunities to improve life and career skills. The importance of these spaces has grown over the years. In Türkiye, the Ministry of National Education has established makerspace-like environments, known as Design and Skills-Labs (Tasarım Beceri Atölyeleri or TBA in Turkish) in public schools. This study was conducted to explore public-school teachers’ understanding of collaborative learning (CL) and teamwork strategies in the design and skills labs. The sequential exploratory design was applied for this mixed method research to collect data in two phases: qualitative interviews with experts working on makerspaces, followed by quantitative survey data collection from public school teachers who work in TBAs. The qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews from 13 national and international field experts to understand what collaboration and teamwork mean in makerspaces. The themes and subthemes that emerged from this phase guided the quantitative data collection phase. The latter was conducted in the form of an online survey with 101 public school TBA teachers. The results indicated that teachers know the importance of CL, its application, and strategies in the learning environment. However, CL strategies, assessment techniques, and resources continued to be one of the major challenges faced by teachers in TBAs. The factors that interfere with teachers’ competencies include the lack of prior training on TBA environments. As for resources, financial and funding factors were speculated to be challenging as well.

Keywords

• makerspaces
• design and skills labs
• collaborative learning
• teamwork
• collaborative strategies.

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