Intersubjective uncertainty and positioning in a school makerspace

Background

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in engineering and design, and having students engage with uncertainty can be fruitful for learning. This paper introduces the idea of intersubjective uncertainty and shows that learners in the makerspace routinely leveraged uncertainty to further their own goals.

Purpose/Hypothesis(es)

This paper investigates how students in a school makerspace made bids to produce and leverage intersubjective uncertainty within collaborative project work, and how uptake of uncertainty bids was intertwined with participants' positionality.

Design/Method

Data collection took place through participant observation, field note-taking, and video recording in a high-school makerspace. Interaction analysis of one focal group's video-recorded interactions identified and examined intersubjective uncertainty bids and their uptake in relation to participant positionalities.

Results

Students made intersubjective uncertainty bids to further open space in the discourse to discuss their interests and goals. There was great variability in whose uncertainty bids were taken up or not by the group, in ways connected to positionality (status). Uptake of uncertainty was related to further discussion and pursuit of those ideas and goals.

Conclusions

Attention to intersubjective uncertainty and how students leverage it to pursue learning and social goals can extend existing perspectives on uncertainty in engineering education, offering insights into more equitable and effective pedagogies in project- and inquiry-based learning.