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The Maker Within: Why Teaching Knowledge Is a Web, Not a Ladder
In maker education, there’s no meaningful hierarchy between what teachers know, how they teach, and who they teach
In education, we often refer to three core types of knowledge teachers need: subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and general pedagogical knowledge. This model, introduced by Lee Shulman in the 1980s, helps us make sense of the complexity of teaching. But it can also mislead us and especially if we start seeing it as a ladder.
The assumption often goes: First, you learn the content. Then, you learn how to teach it. And only then do you figure out how to connect with your students. But anyone who’s ever guided a group of students through a maker project knows that it just doesn’t work that way.
Whether you’re helping students build a solar-powered boat, design a sustainable package, or program a Microbit, you need all three types of knowledge at once. And more than that, you need to know how to move between them, flexibly, in real time.
Knowledge in context, not in order
In Invent to Learn, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager (2019) describe the maker teacher not as a dispenser of information, but as a co-learner and someone who builds alongside their students. In that…
