The Maker Movement: a Global Movement for Educational Change

Educators have been interested in the global maker movement as it provides hands-on learning opportunities for youths to enhance their knowledge and skills of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This study aims to understand the maker movement from the perspective of frame analysis and collective action frames. Based on 33 interviews with makers from China, Europe, and the USA, we use diagnostic and prognostic frames to analyze the problems related to makerspaces and how makers solve these problems. The results highlight that makerspaces are deeply rooted in local communities as they both integrate local expectations with their ideal of making and depend on communities to solve internal problems. Makers also proactively change the mindset of what constitutes and defines making of other actors (e.g. public). Discussion focuses on the roles of governments and the inequity of resource mobilization in terms of STEM learning in the movement.