What Maker Education and the Arts Teach Us About Creating Inclusive Learning Spaces

In my high school teaching, I’ve noticed that many trans-identifying students gravitate toward the arts and makerspaces. Curious to learn more about what these places and pedagogies can teach us about equitable education, I spoke with experts in both realms, as well as one of my trans students, to uncover useful strategies that teachers can use in any classroom—even if unrelated to the arts or maker education. I’d like my takeaways about creating learning spaces that feel inclusive for all students.

ACKNOWLEDGE AND COUNTERACT GENDER BIAS

I teach engineering in a makerspace and physics in a traditional classroom. In physics, there’s immense baggage around gender. Whether or not you believe men have an inherent leg up in STEM, our world does. But makerspaces? They’re new enough that the baggage isn’t specific—we don’t have deep, cultural biases enforcing gendered stereotypes about them. The arts are similar—can men, women, and people all along the gender spectrum paint? Play piano? Act? Why not? 

So, in my physics classroom, I try to ensure that every student knows I support them. I work hard to be a cheerleader for each student. I always remind them that the content they’re learning is hard, but each of them can do it. I encourage them to attend extra-help sessions with friend groups so they arrive with peers they’re comfortable being around. And I provide clear review resources to help make the seemingly impossible more manageable. 

When I think of why I pursued science, I remember all of the support I had in following that path and what a difference it made for me as someone who was a gender minority in STEM. If I can support my students the same way, I can help them feel encouraged to stay in the field. 

CREATE EQUITABLE ASSESSMENTS

My physics class is more equitable when my assessments are approachable for all. I remember how in school I used to read physics prompts and have very little sense of what was being asked. Many students have echoed this sentiment. This inscrutability is unwelcoming for people who already feel that they aren’t supposed to succeed in a given classroom.

By infusing maker education and the arts into creative assessments, I make my class more welcoming. My student told me, “For me, art is an outlet—there’s this ingrained anxiety in a lot of queer kids, and arts are spaces where I can let all that go and just focus on what’s in my hands, what I want to do with it, and where it’s going. The ability to take something in my mind, put it on paper, and then make it into a 3D thing is almost anxiety-relieving in a way.”

In my physics classroom, I offer creative opportunities through projects—for example, the Interplanetary Olympics, where students research how different sports would be played on different planets. How do different amounts of gravity affect your favorite sport? But equally important, how would the experience of the Olympics be different on a different planet? How would art change, altering logos and mascots? 

Students demonstrate their understanding of gravity in ways other than calculating their weight on different planets. By building assessments that are scientific but also creative, we can mimic the success of an arts or makerspace class. 

CREATE A MODERN PHYSICAL SPACE

I teach at a Friends school, and occasionally we observe Quaker Meeting for Worship in the Providence Friends Meeting. It feels like time traveling—a large room with picture windows, straight-backed pews, sun streaking the space. But the student I interviewed told me that the Meeting House makes them extremely uncomfortable. The old-school vibes of the room remind them of a time when they would’ve been persecuted, not allowed to publicly explore their identity. They reminded me that “to queer people, antiquity is hand-in-hand with having to hide.” 

This was a wake-up call. I remember my college, often described as Hogwarts-adjacent. What felt, for me, like stepping into fiction likely reminded peers of times when they were not invited on campus. In contrast, makerspaces, theaters, and art spaces tend to get renovated. Modern spaces are more inviting for students whose identities can feel at odds with the school.

What can you do to create an inviting space for students who need modernity? I get it—it’s hard to make your classroom feel new. Most teachers love swapping stories about how bad their classrooms were. But small steps can communicate modernity without requiring new rooms. 

I decorate my classroom with NASA art and laser-cut scientist snowflakes. I have colleagues who’ve created modernity with flexible seating options or interesting art that they love. 

Decorating the walls with recent student work is another way to bring activity into the room and invite all students to feel a part of the classroom makeup. Consider ways your school’s energy might mimic an art room or a makerspace.

In conversations with colleagues and students, I was struck by a sense of scarcity: that the makerspace is the “only” place welcoming to this student or “everywhere but the theater feels wrong.” We all want our classrooms to be places where students can learn and feel included. Certainly, scarcity isn’t something we want to champion in schools. If all classrooms and spaces were inclusive, students would do better—regardless of gender identity or sexuality. Studying the similarities between makerspaces and art spaces allows us to take the first step.