Creating a Positive Learning Studio Culture

A Learning Studio is a place where learners define the problems they want to solve and design solutions to address them. Creating a student-driven learning space not only means allowing students to have agency over their learning, but creating an inclusive environment where every student is supported and encouraged to reach their highest potential.

Innovative Makerspace Management

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed–it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” – Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

In her webinar Innovative Makerspace Management, Michelle Carlson discusses how educators can create a student-centered learning environment in their makerspace:

• Start by developing the culture: Create an environment where students are supported, inspired, empowered and intrinsically motivated to learn
• Set expectations instead of “rules.”
• Incorporate choice: Give students the freedom to pursue projects and ideas that interest them.
• Honor diversity in interests, projects, personalities: This could include providing space for a student to work independently if that is how the student works best.

By using the strategies above, educators should not need to “manage” their makerspace at all, rather, they become facilitators of a student-driven learning environment.

Watch highlights from the webinar:

https://vimeo.com/200252967
Additional Resources:

• Read: How One Teacher Let Go of Control to Focus on Student-Centered Approaches (KQED)
• Read: 7 Reasons Why ‘Classroom Leadership’ is Better than ‘Classroom Management’ (David Geurin)

Creating a Gender-Friendly Learning Environment

A gender-friendly learning environment is a learning space that embraces and encourages all learners, regardless of gender. In her webinar Gender Friendly Learning Spaces, Dr. Catherine Hill at the American Association of University Women outlines strategies educators can use to mitigate bias and make the learning environment inclusive for all learners:

1. Reject stereotyping and challenge implicit bias:
   • Promote positive role models of diverse leaders in STEM
   • Encourage students of all genders to play and work together
2. Promote a growth mindset:
   • Remind your students that intellectual skills can be acquired
   • Embrace the struggle
   • Teach spatial skills along with everything else
   • Manage math anxiety and push all students to high levels
3. Do not tolerate any sex/gender shaming or harassment

Watch highlights from the webinar:

https://vimeo.com/200252964
Additional Resources:

• Read: Steps Teachers Can Take to Keep Girls and Minorities in Computer Science Education (KQED)
• Read: Promoting Psychological Safety in Classrooms (Getting Smart)