Designing for rightful presence in STEM-rich making: Community ethnography as pedagogy

Making and makerspaces have largely proliferated as an out-of-school, informal activity that mostly self-selects interested participants. To take up equity concerns seriously, we need to consider the ways in which classroom teaching is both an historicized and relational activity, and how classroom STEM teaching and learning, under which making is subsumed, has long alienated youth of color. The construct of rightful presence is one way to consider more systemically how to make sense of the historicized and relational nature of teaching and learning. We show how integrating an equity-oriented design approach, community ethnography as pedagogy, as a part engaging in STEM-rich making, support the emergences of three making present practices: modeling ethnographic data, re-performing injustices towards understanding and solidarity, and making change dynamic and visible through engineering practices, all of which reflect the on-going struggle youth face in their lives, write these injustices onto a longer history of struggle in the school/classroom, and allow for a refusal to be victimized.