Tinkering with “Failure”- Equity, Learning, and the Iterative Design Process

Tinkering with “Failure”: Equity, Learning, and the
Iterative Design Process
Jean J. Ryoo
Exploratorium
Pier 15/17
SF, CA 94111
001-415-528-4404
jryoo@exploratorium.edu
Nicole Bulalacao
Exploratorium
Pier 15/17
SF, CA 94111
001-415-528-4417
nbulalacao@exploratorium.edu
Linda Kekelis
Techbridge
7700 Edgewater Dr.
Oakland, CA 94621
001-510-777-9170
lkekelis@techbridgegirls.org
Emily McLeod
Techbridge
7700 Edgewater Dr.
Oakland, CA 94621
001-510-777-9170
emcleod@techbridgegirls.org
Ben Henriquez
Techbridge
7700 Edgewater Dr.
Oakland, CA 94621
001-510-777-9170
bhenriquez@techbridgegirls.org
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to reframe popular notions of “failure” as
recently celebrated in the Maker Movement, Silicon Valley, and
beyond. Building on Vossoughi et al.’s 2013 FabLearn
publication describing how a focus on iterations/drafts can serve
as an equity-oriented pedagogical move in afterschool tinkering
contexts, we explore what it means for afterschool youth and
educators to persist through unexpected challenges when using an
iterative design process in their tinkering projects. More
specifically, this paper describes: 1) how young women in a
program geared toward increasing equitable access to quality
science, technology, and engineering education for girls
underrepresented in the field (Techbridge) make sense of their
tinkering experiences while persisting through challenges in the
iterative design process, 2) which pedagogical moves both
Techbridge girls and educators value when persisting through
frustrations, 3) what iterative design learning looks like in the
afterschool program, and 4) how supporting iterative design
processes over end-products can redefine notions of STEM ability
and intelligence by inviting diverse learners into activities they
find meaningful.
Keywords
Tinkering, Making, Iteration, Equity, Failure, Persistence,
Learning, Pedagogy, Afterschool Education
1. INTRODUCTION – CELEBRATING
“FAILURE” IN THE MAKER MOVEMENT
“Failure” has been highly celebrated within the Maker Movement.
Drawing on Dweck’s [6] work regarding growth mindsets,
Dougherty [4] emphasizes how the Maker Movement can help
“creat[e] innovative thinkers and doers” by fostering a “maker
mindset” that “tolerates risk and failure” (p. 9). Similarly, Martin
[15] explains that this “maker mindset” includes being “failure-
positive.” He describes Make magazine’s introduction of the
“Most Spectacular Failure Award” upholding failure as the “new
winning” [17]. In his study of young makers, Wagner [28]
describes a key quality of innovators as the ability to “tolerate
failure” (p. 12). This Maker Movement message has run parallel
to Silicon Valley’s latest mantra: “fail fast, fail early, fail often”
[1], “fail better” [18], and “fail forward” [12].
However, what does the word “failure” actually mean for youth? Are we
trying to encourage children to “fail”? Is it something different from
“failure” that we want to notice and celebrate?
If we are to believe that making can “reinvent education” [24] by
creating more engaging, accessible, and equitable learning
opportunities for all youth, then one must ask: why would
children attending under-resourced schools in low-income
communities want to fail when the opportunities to try again are
few and far between in environments characterized by high-stakes
testing and tracking?
Eason [7] highlights this tension in her complexification of the
Maker Movement’s promotion of failure with youth, especially
children from low-income or historically marginalized
communities:
[I]n America, when you’re poor, and when you lack
privilege, the consequences of failure are different….When
you give yourself permission to fail, the implicit assumption
is that you have the resources—materials, time,
reputation/social capital—to try again…When you’re poor,
you don’t have resources…Risk aversion is often ultimately
the more practical option. (par. 4-5)
Martin [15] also recognizes that “Failure is not a happy word in
most educational circles, particularly when attached to schools,
students, or initiatives” (p. 35). And while the Center Stage videos
from Maker Faire Bay Area 2015 featured a video about “Epic
Fails” with Jimmy Diresta, Bob Clagett, David Picciuto, and Mike
Senese describing what they learned “when things go very wrong”
(http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2015/video/), few examples of
failed projects were displayed at the Maker Faire in San Mateo
this year; the majority of presentations featured peoples’ best and
most successful creations.
We believe that most makers do not necessarily want children to
fail on their tests, at school, in their careers, etc. and this was
probably not the original intention of makers who “celebrate
failure.” Clarification about what is meant by “celebrating failure”
in the Maker movement is therefore needed, particularly as
educational spaces take on the notion that children—and, more
specifically, low-income youth in under-resourced schools—must
be taught to have “grit.” This idea arose out of Angela
Duckworth’s [5] study of how perseverance (which she and her
colleagues call “grit”) related to achievement among successful
populations (e.g., West Point cadets, Ivy League undergraduates,
etc.) with the conclusion that grit reflected both resilience in the
face of failure as well as sustained interest in a practice over time.
Of course, persistence and passion are characteristics we wish to
see in all of our students. However, as Mike Rose [23] warns,
“grit” can be dangerous when taken up as the newest “fad” or
“magic bullet” to improve schooling through character education
that could “sacrifice policies aimed at reducing poverty for
interventions to change the way poor people see the world” (par.
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2). Rose [23] explains that this can be problematic when “a focus
on individual characteristics of low-income children…take our
attention away from the structural inequalities they face” (par.
14). He continues: “[i]t is hard to finish what you begin when
food and housing are unstable, or when you have three or four
teachers in a given year…[i]t is equally hard to pursue a career
with consistency when the jobs available to you are low-wage,
short-term and vulnerable, and have few if any benefits or
protections” (par. 21). Furthermore, “grit” alone does not make a
successful person who positively engages with school,
community, and family. A combination of personality traits are
necessary to develop that “well-functioning and ethical person”:
“[t]he items in the grit instruments could describe the brilliant
surgeon who is a distant and absent parent, or, for that fact, the
smart, ambitious, amoral people who triggered the Great
Recession” [23] (par. 13).
This brings us to an important point that Kohn [14] makes: “What
matters isn’t just how long one persists, but why one does so”
(par. 7). Narrowly focusing on persistence alone by celebrating
buzzwords such as “grit” can take attention away from the reasons
driving youth onward, as well as the quality of their efforts.
Furthermore, the idea that “failure” should be celebrated may not
make sense or appeal to our youth. Nor does it reflect the more
nuanced ways that making education can support creativity,
passion, persistence through unexpected challenges, and a focus
on process over product.
So how should we understand “failure” in the making/tinkering
community? This paper explores ways to reframe our
conversations about failure through a focus on “iterations and
drafts” in the context of an afterschool tinkering program geared
toward broadening participation in science, technology, and
engineering for young women.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ABOUT
“ITERATION” IN MAKING/TINKERING
This paper highlights the efforts of a research-practice partnership
called the California Tinkering Afterschool Network (CTAN)
involving the Exploratorium (San Francisco), Techbridge
(Oakland), Discovery Cube (Orange County), and Community
Science Workshop (Fresno and Watsonville). In our collaboration,
we appreciate the notion that valuable learning can occur when
students push themselves through challenging moments, moving
past project failures toward their personal goals. Yet putting these
ideas into practice requires sensitivity toward our students’
experiences and perspectives within our various afterschool
tinkering programs. We understand that most youth are
uncomfortable with the notion of “failure.” Verbally
acknowledging that we learn from failed projects does little to
engage students in moving past unexpected setbacks. This is
especially true when we have all been taught that the point of
learning is ultimately to “succeed.”
In order to support youth in our afterschool programs to work
through and learn from the inevitable missteps and frustrations
that arise in their tinkering/making projects, our Network focuses
on the iterative design process as a means of celebrating process
over products rather than focusing on failure. We draw on the idea
that “[t]he process of becoming stuck and then ‘unstuck’ is the
heart of tinkering” [21] (p. 55). The value of this aspect of
tinkering has been illustrated in the Exploratorium’s “Tinkering
Learning Dimensions Framework” [2, 13] which outlines what
learning looks like in tinkering activities. One of the Dimensions
of Learning is defined as “Initiative and Intentionality” which
includes “persist to optimize strategies or solutions” [2] (p. 104)
and “persistence in the face of setbacks…[when] learners continue
to work with a creation that fails to function or causes them
frustration and disappointment” [13] (p. 158). This also involves
“intellectual courage…[when learners] continue to work and play
despite a lack of confidence or others’ skepticism in their
approach” [13] (p. 158). Tinkering activities focused on the
iterative design process make room for such initiative and
intentionality.
In CTAN, we have been trying to understand how a focus on the
iterative design process can engage youth in meaningful STEM
learning, regardless of gender, age, socioeconomic status, home
language, race/ethnicity, interest in science, etc. And as Martinez
and Stager [16] would argue, learning through iteration in
tinkering/making is not the same as failure: “any iterative design
cycle is about continuous improvement, keeping what works, and
dealing with what doesn’t. This is learning, not failure” (p. 70).
In a reflection on tinkering, learning, and equity in afterschool
programs published by FabLearn in 2013, Vossoughi, Escudé,
Kong, and Hooper [27] highlight the value of focusing on
iteration through “drafts” as an equity-oriented pedagogical move
in tinkering. By reframing “mistakes” and “failed attempts” as
“drafts,” children are given space to express all ideas such that
different “lines of becoming” can be appreciated (p. 3).
Importantly, rather than emphasizing learning as an individual
pursuit, their work describes the need to create the social
“contexts” or learning environments necessary for youth to pursue
their creativity within learning communities.
Of course, the idea that iterations and drafts are valuable for
learning is not new. Blikstein [3] has described the importance of
creating safe spaces for youth to iterate on designs in a “digital
fabrication lab”—a practice that “the one-size-fits all 50-minute
[traditional school] format” doesn’t necessarily allow (p. 7).
Blikstein [3] describes how a roller coaster project created by
John, Tyler, and Bob doesn’t work. However, with the collective
support of others in the lab, peoples’ suggestions about how to
move the track rather than the car, and time/space to create
multiple iterations, the boys were able to create a working
prototype (p. 12). Blikstein [3] emphasizes that engagement in
learning despite design challenges and setbacks was possible
through explicit organization of activities and environments that
support youth to iteratively work through their projects.
Turkle and Papert [25] have also illustrated how working through
iterations and drafts in computer programming can deepen student
learning, especially for learners who do not necessarily identify as
programmers or follow traditional pathways to computing. They
share Lévi-Strauss’s description of non-Western scientists as
“bricoleurs” who construct theories by “arranging and
rearranging” during which mistakes become opportunities for
“mid-course corrections” (p. 135). In this way, bricoleurs value
hindsight, drawing important conclusions through iteration upon
what others might consider “mistakes.” Turkle and Papert use this
framing to describe how talented and creative computer
programming students are often bricoleurs whose approaches
unfortunately go unappreciated or unrecognized. This is described
through examples of a first-year female college student and a
young girl who coded like writing “poetry” or “sculpting” in ways
that challenged traditional methods of hiding code in a “black
box.” These young women were not valued by their computer
science learning communities which leads one to wonder: how
would embracing learners’ open iterative design approaches
impact entry into computer science for individuals historically

underrepresented in the field? Were these young women
eventually thwarted from pursuing computing courses or careers
because others did not value their approaches and transparent
iteration drafting processes? These examples illustrate how
supporting iterative approaches to learning can (1) allow us to
“see” students’ thought-processes and problem-solving
approaches, and (2) invite diverse learners into intellectual
activities that they find meaningful.
3. CONTEXT OF STUDY
There has been growing excitement about the possibilities of
making/tinkering for teaching Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics (STEM)—particularly for youth
underrepresented in STEM fields. This is because
making/tinkering provide low barrier of entry for people to
engage in STEM phenomena and practices while creating objects
with aesthetic and self-expressive dimensions [20, 21, 27]. Our
collaboration called the California Tinkering Afterschool Network
(CTAN) brings together four organizations at five afterschool
sites in the state to better understand how STEM-rich tinkering
can support meaningful STEM learning and equity-oriented
pedagogy toward engaging culturally and linguistically diverse
youth in the low-income communities we serve.
In our work, we focus on “tinkering” which is a genre of
“making” that involves a “playful, experimental, iterative style of
engagement, in which makers are continually reassessing their
goals, exploring new paths, and imagining new possibilities” [22]
(p. 164). Our network focuses on the ways that tinkering activities
with associated pedagogical strategies can make STEM more
accessible to youth from low-income, historically marginalized
communities by allowing students to use an array of ideas and
materials rooted in their experiences and interests, therefore
valuing learners’ diverse ways of knowing [26].
More specifically, in CTAN we are trying to answer two
questions:
1) What does effective facilitation of equity-oriented,
STEM-rich tinkering involve?
2) How can we support educators to develop facilitation
skills that sustain tinkering in afterschool programs?
In this paper, we explore the first research question by building on
Vossoughi et al.’s [27] description of how a focus on
iterations/drafts can support equity-oriented teaching in
afterschool tinkering. Their work illustrates that when iteration or
drafts are valued as the expression and pursuit of ideas, then: (1)
tinkering activities allow for learners to pursue multiple pathways
(characteristics of tinkering activities as defined by Petrich et al.
[21]), (2) diverse ways of thinking and approaches are celebrated
and (3) practices/concepts are made transparent so that thinking
can be made visible and skills shared [9].
Our work adds to the conversation by sharing what the iterative
design process looks like and means to youth and educators
creating Maker Faire projects in a Techbridge afterschool
program. Our research questions include:
1) How do Techbridge girls make sense of their tinkering
experiences while persisting through challenges in the
iterative design process?
a. What does learning through iteration look like?
2) What pedagogical moves do Techbridge students and
educators value for supporting iteration as a means for
overcoming unexpected challenges?
Techbridge offers afterschool programming to young women,
with a focus on youth from communities underrepresented in
science, technology, and engineering fields. This program seeks to
inspire girls to discover a passion for STEM through hands-on
learning and real-world exposure to STEM projects and fields.
Techbridge also offers support for girls’ families, role models
visiting the afterschool programs, school districts, and program
partners to provide guidance to young women so they can pursue
their personal interests or career pathways. Participation is
voluntary and free. Techbridge “program coordinators” team up
with teachers from local elementary, middle, and high schools to
recruit students into the program and co-lead afterschool
engineering and making/tinkering activities at the school sites.
Girls are recruited by teachers and program coordinators who
present at events and set up information tables on campuses
during school hours. Girls and their parents are asked to commit
to staying with the once-a-week program for the full school year.
Most sites follow a general inquiry-based, hands-on curriculum of
activities throughout the school year according to age group.
However, the particular Techbridge site participating in this study
involved public high school girls beginning the school year with
open-ended problem solving activities, followed by
designing/creating their own projects using Arduino
microcontrollers that were shared at Maker Faire in San Mateo in
May 2015.
4. METHODS
This research drew on qualitative methods—interpretive
participant observation privileging the “immediate and local
meanings of actions” [8] (p. 119)—to provide “thick descriptions”
[10] of learning and pedagogy in tinkering activities. Design-
Based Implementation Research (DBIR [19]) also informed the
formulation of research questions, approach to data collection
(e.g., co-design of interview protocol, shared decision-making on
data sources for analysis), as well as data analysis with
Techbridge program directors and facilitators collaborating
closely with Exploratorium researchers in a mutual research-
practice partnership.
Data sources were collected at a high school Techbridge program
serving 25 girls of whom 40% were White, 20% Asian/Pacific
Islander, 20% Latina, 8% African American, and 12% multi-
ethnic (African American and White, Latina and White, and Asian
and White). Researchers visited the Techbridge afterschool
program every week during the last half of the 2013-14 school
year and the entire 2014-15 school year. Data sources included
fieldnotes, audio recordings of interviews with students and
facilitators, video recordings, photographs, researcher memos, and
student work. Data sources were analyzed using a grounded
theory approach [11] that involved reading through the data
corpus to identify common codes that emerged across the data
sources. This data corpus was then reviewed again to mark themes
in which groups of codes aligned. These themes were then
grouped into shared categories and then data sources were
reviewed again to find lines of contrast that might highlight
important outlying events, ideas, and practices informing shared
categories.
5. FINDINGS
5.1 Youth Perspectives on Tinkering
Observations of the Techbridge afterschool program revealed that
students were regularly encouraged to use iterations/drafts as a
means of developing their projects. Techbridge educators called
this the “Engineering Design Process,” which included a

continuous cycle of brainstorming, designing, testing, and
redesigning. Every project—whether a single day’s activity with a
problem to solve or the program’s culminating Maker Faire
project—required that the girls sketch out or write about their
plan, share that plan with facilitators before moving forward,
reflect on what was working or not working with first prototypes,
then redesign and rebuild to fix problems and improve on first
prototypes. An example is shown below in which a student named
Ali1
sketched out her idea for how to repurpose an object
purchased for under $5 at a local second-hand store (this was part
of a “hacking” assignment; see Figure 1 below):
Figure 1: Ali’s design sketch of the first iteration of her
hacking project.
Ali planned to insert a photo-sensor and a speaker inside the book.
Her goal was to have the photo-sensor trigger a speaker to make a
screaming sound whenever the book was opened to the first
appearance of its evil character (Voldemort). She wrote, “when
book opened light sensor detects light, setting off, causing speaker
to scream.” As the weeks progressed, Ali’s project underwent
various phases of redesign as she worked through challenges,
learning how to code the photo-sensor and use a power drill.
5.1.1 Girls Define Tinkering as an Iterative Process
The year was full of tinkering activities similar to the hacking
project described above, and culminated in the ultimate tinkering
project of girls’ own designs that was shared at San Mateo’s
Maker Faire. Yet how did girls make sense of their experiences
tinkering at Techbridge?
We had the opportunity to talk with approximately half of the
Techbridge girls specifically about their tinkering processes when
creating projects2
. The Harry Potter book hacker explained: “trial
and error. Mostly error” [Ali; 5/16/15]. Ali’s partner for the
Maker Faire project expanded on this point by noting that “trial
and error” wasn’t as simple as doing something until it worked,
but that “trials” involved careful “experiment[ation] and seeing
what happens when I test this or this” [Erin; 5/16/15].
Similarly, Paloma stated that tinkering meant “figuring out how
something works…test[ing] it in different areas. Chang[ing]
something and then test[ing] it and then chang[ing] something
1
All names of youth and educators have been changed.
2
Quotes shared in this article come from conversations with girls
who chose to focus on their tinkering processes in interviews.
Since some girls talked more about other topics (e.g., what
tinkering looks like in their families, afterschool vs. in-school,
etc.) not all participants are represented in this article focusing
on learning and iteration.
again. It’s like a constant process” [Paloma; 5/16/15]. This
process included the purposeful testing out of ideas and designs to
reveal new knowledge. Tinkering required girls “to respond to
different problems we’re having and try new approaches if
something’s not working out perfectly. So our project could be
different from something we started with and that’s fine, we just
work through it and come to our end result” [Helena; 5/16/15].
However, echoing Ali’s earlier comment about facing “mostly
error” in tinkering, Luisa noted how the tinkering process
included “frustration” since projects were “never completely
done” but were “worth continuously working on” [5/18/15]. As
Jenna explained, projects could be challenging but “you can figure
it out and you can learn from your mistakes…even if you’ve
never seen it before or never seen anything like it before”
[5/16/15]. The majority of girls seemed to embrace the idea that
tinkering involved a continuous process of experiencing
challenges and working through them toward learning something
new.
5.1.2 Autonomy and Creative Authorship
When asked what inspired them to work past these challenges and
continue developing their projects through each iteration, many of
the girls emphasized the importance of having autonomy and
creative authorship of their projects. For example, Erin
explained that she was able to enjoy the process of trial and error
and continuous “experimenting” because “it was something I
wanted to do because they let me choose what I wanted to do
and work on—if you want people to learn stuff you should let
them choose what to do” [5/16/15]. Ali similarly noted that it was
more exciting to push through those “trial and error” moments
with iterative design when she had come up with the project idea
herself because “there weren’t really instructions so that you just
had to figure it out by yourself” [5/16/15]. Paloma also
explained that she would find herself “committing to that project
and really wanting to do [it]…because you chose this thing to do
and solve” which felt different from what usually happened in
school where “we don’t have that much of a process and we
certainly don’t have that much freedom to choose what we want
to do” [5/16/15]. Relatedly, Rebecca explained “if I like what I’m
trying to do and, okay, I’m going to figure out and troubleshoot
and try to fix it. But if it’s something where I just…don’t really
care about it that much then whatever, I’m frustrated…[I] liked
[my] project so I wanted to finish” [5/16/15]. Techbridge girls
emphasized that they were committed to working through
challenging moments through the iterative design process of
tinkering because they felt ownership of their projects and
processes.
5.1.3 Ownership Over Challenges
In their interview, Angie and Lulu offered an example from their
experiences between creating projects to present at Maker Faire in
2014 vs. 2015. In 2014, the girls followed a step-by-step dancing
robot project to recreate for the Faire. In 2015, the girls worked
with two other Techbridge girls to create an interactive soundbox
that created sound and flashed lights when copper plates on the
outside were touched. Angie noted that during the robot project
“we didn’t have to think because it was just copy the book.
But this year [2015] we have to think and have disagreements”
[3/16/15]. Lulu added that this meant “the problems are more
exciting [with the interactive soundbox] than the problem we had
last year” [3/16/15]. When asked to elaborate about these
“disagreements” and “problems” being exciting, the girls

explained that with the robot project, they knew the problems they
were having were related to access to wifi and the trial program
they were using for free. They couldn’t find consistent wifi and
they couldn’t afford to pay for more than the trial program. Thus,
they felt uninspired to be able to do anything to improve their
project. However, with the soundbox project, it was more
“exciting” when the problems had unknown solutions but also
when “we know it’s our fault. I feel like it’s better than having it
not be your fault…the fact that we didn’t quite know what the
problem was…you had to think about it and you’re actually
doing something, so I think that’s better” [Lulu; 3/16/15]. In
other words, Lulu was explaining that the problems arising with
the soundbox were original issues stemming from their actions
and so the girls knew they could figure out solutions if they kept
trying to solve these problems. However, with their previous robot
project, they knew that problems were rooted in the wifi and
program, neither of which the girls could change or control. Angie
embellished on this idea of the importance of ownership over
tinkering projects to foster the desire to solve challenges and
debate solutions with one another: “[with the robotics project] I
feel like there was less to argue over because we had instructions
and all we had to do was follow the instructions and probably
whine about why it don’t work, but this year we came up with
the ideas…you can change it because it’s our idea, we don’t
have to follow instructions” [3/16/15]. The girls felt more
committed to working through challenging moments in the
iterative process of design and redesign while creating their
Maker Faire projects when they had a sense of ownership of the
ideas and, therefore, ownership of the challenges and frustrations.
5.1.4 Process vs. Product
Yet why would the girls at Techbridge persist through the
frustrations arising during their tinkering projects? Multiple girls
mentioned the idea that “having to go through so many failures to
have a success is challenging, but it’s also really rewarding when
you succeed because you know you were trying hard” [Elena;
5/16/15]. What was particularly fascinating about this idea was
that the rewards of persisting through challenges were more
valuable the harder the effort; this went hand-in-hand with the
notion that the process of trying to figure out solutions was more
rewarding than the final success: “We want to do everything we
can do, and if we stop in the middle when we could have kept
going, that’s really disappointing and defeats me even more than
just failing. Like, doing everything you can is almost more
rewarding than succeeding” [Elena; 5/16/15]. This suggests that
girls respected the intellectual complexity of their tinkering
processes.
Interestingly, Elena and her partners (2 of 3 who were new to
Techbridge) never completed their Maker Faire project. However
they proudly displayed the four non-functioning prototypes they
created at Maker Faire in San Mateo. When asked about their
presentation, Elena’s partner explained it “was still rewarding”
because even though “it doesn’t work, I’m cool with that” because
“we worked really hard on it” [Mila; 5/16/15]. Mila was
particularly proud of how her group’s soldering progressed with
each prototype and how they were still able to come up with code
for their arduino even if they couldn’t test its effectiveness. This
focus on process over product seemed to help the girls reframe
any feelings of disappointment or frustration that one might
naturally feel when multiple prototypes failed to work.
Figure 2: Elena and partners’ non-functioning wave shield
prototypes on display at Maker Faire 2015.
Importantly, the girls seemed to recognize that their teachers’
emphasis on the idea that the iterative design process never quite
ends and projects do not need to be “perfect” was central to their
abilities to value process over end-product while committing to
problem-solving in iterative design. As Elena explained: “if
somebody is telling you that it has to be perfect and then you fail,
that’s super disappointing, but if you see what could be improved
and you’re seeing…I think that actually lets us look at our
projects and not say that they’re perfect but see the things that we
could improve even if we think that we have succeeded, we can
still say, ‘it’s not perfect, I could do this and this to make it better,
and next time…’ I think it’s a good outlook” [5/16/15]. The ways
girls internalized this notion became visible in how Paloma
described projects as never having an “end” because you could
always continue “perfecting it” [5/16/15]. As Paloma explained,
“I was familiar with prototyping but I think Techbridge really
cemented that idea, that you make different prototypes and test
things out” [5/16/15]. Techbridge educators supported girls in
embracing the idea that projects didn’t need to be “perfect” or
match their original designs exactly—“prototypes” were
embraced as part of the iterative design process in Techbridge
tinkering activities.
5.2 Pedagogy that Supports Learning through
Iteration
When students were asked to describe the pedagogical supports
they found most helpful while tinkering, the majority noted the
importance of having educators by their side but never telling
them the answers. As Elena explained: “I find it really helpful
when they work with us instead of for us. They work with us so
that we can learn and we’re not just doing what they told us to do.
So next time when we get stuck again we can figure it out on our
own” [5/16/15]. Jenna also said she liked that her Techbridge
teacher “asks a lot of questions before he jumps in to answer
you…he’ll ask me questions and he makes you realize what
you’ve done and what you could easily fix once you’ve realized
it” [5/16/15]. Helena agreed with this, explaining how the ways
educators stood by their side to work through challenges without
simply explaining how to solve them was valuable: “It’s not us
asking and the teacher coming up with an answer and showing us
exactly what to do” [5/16/15]. The girls felt that they could work
through frustrating moments with their projects because teachers
were willing to “stick with you” [Erin; 5/16/15] and be “side-by-
side trying to figure it out” [Paloma; 5/16/15] without simply
giving an answer and moving on.

Interestingly, students’ descriptions of effective pedagogy
reflected educators’ philosophies about how they try to support
Techbridge girls through frustration and challenges. One educator
explained that his role was not really to give “information” or
“how to do things, it’s not the knowledge in that sense but
knowledge in the sense of it’s okay to try things” [Mr. A;
3/23/15]. In order to encourage girls to try things, Mr. A focused
on asking “rhetorical questions for the girls to think about…You
need to ask a lot of rhetorical questions where they’re digging for
the answers. They’re thinking about it” [3/23/15]. Similarly, Mr.
E explained that he often did not know how to solve challenges
girls faced in their projects, but he would be honest about this
with the girls which went a long way in helping them embrace
challenging moments and seek answers to frustrating problems.
Mr. E noted, “I think that humility and just being okay with not
knowing everything… I think students really appreciate when
you don’t know the answer, I think they feel more
comfortable coming to you when they know you’re just not
going to pretend or if you acknowledge that you don’t know
everything I think they feel more comfortable reaching out for
help” [3/23/15]. As Ms. C explained, “students getting frustrated
is a weekly occurrence” but “we try to encourage them to take a
step back and reflect what the issue is” while also explaining that
it’s okay not to know a solution immediately [3/22/15]. As Mr. E
added, he felt it was important to teach “students to be okay with
what they know and what they don’t know and sort of not see
that as a reflection of themselves” [3/23/15]. This pedagogical
approach to supporting girls through iterative design processes in
tinkering required reframing challenges as frustrations with the
projects, rather than indications of intelligence.
The ways that Techbridge educators enacted these sentiments
were visible not only in Mr. A’s “rhetorical questions” or Mr. E’s
honesty about not knowing answers, but also by creating an
environment where educators and students shared their “glorious
goofs” and where educators shared the challenges they faced in
projects alongside the girls. “Glorious goofs” involved regularly
writing down a mistake or challenge faced during the program day
onto a poster that all the girls could see. A volunteer would then
read all the “goofs” experienced by students and teachers alike.
Ms. C noted that girls took pride in being able to say “Oh, I made
this mistake but I learned from it!” [3/22/15]. Mr. E also felt it
was important to show educators’ unfinished or unsolved
prototypes. He explained: “making examples doing the project
yourself, coming up with a list of things that were hard or a list of
things that you would adapt [are valuable because]…it shows the
girls that you can adapt it doesn’t have to be rigid” [3/23/15].
These kinds of pedagogical strategies were just a few that
Techbridge educators adopted as a way to support girls in the
iteration design process and in working through unexpected
challenges.
5.3 Seeing the Value of Iterations Emerge:
The Case of Luisa
Luisa’s experience at Techbridge offers a particularly interesting
illustration of how youth learned through iterative design. Luisa
had explained that tinkering required a disposition of working
through “frustration” with “trial and error” while embracing the
reality that “things don’t work” so one needs to “try again”
[5/18/15]. This attitude was visible in Luisa’s presentation of a
Rube Goldberg machine at Maker Faire in 2014. Luisa and her
partner created a machine that was supposed to end with a trophy
hitting the “play” button of an iHome stereo. Their machine did
not perform perfectly and Luisa had to reset it several times for
Maker Faire attendees. While some might interpret the
imperfections of this Rube Goldberg machine as a “problem” or
“failure,” this was not how Luisa interpreted the experience.
When interviewed about her project, she recognized these
imperfections in the machine as simply “part of the routine.”
She noted that she did not feel stressed in any way because they
had “dealt with it [trial/error] a lot here [at Techbridge]”
[5/18/15].
During her senior year in the fall of 2014, Luisa returned to
Techbridge. The ways she embraced this attitude of embracing
iterative design and working through challenges was visible
during an introductory activity at the start of the school year.
Students were given the challenge to design a tool that could pull
a golf ball out of a paper bag without one’s hands ever touching
the inside or outside of the bag. Students were given limited
materials (chopsticks, a specific amount of tape, rubber bands,
index cards). At the end of the activity, all the girls came up and
shared their projects with one another. When Luisa and Trisha
went in front of the class to describe their invention, they showed
a scooper created out of two sticks with post-its at the ends
attached with thumbtacks. While Trisha was setting up their
project, Luisa mentioned to the class that their project was still in
“prototype phase” and ‘it doesn’t work, but that’s okay.’ The girls
laughed about this and seemed completely comfortable that their
project was the only one that didn’t successfully grab the golf ball
out of the bag. Seeing this moment as valuable for illuminating
the iterative design process, Mr. E asked everyone: ‘Did any of
[your] inventions end up looking like the first sketches?’ Only one
group raised their hands. [Fieldnote; 9/15/2014] In this moment,
the educator encouraged Techbridge girls to consider how it was
expected that designs should shift and grow over time with
multiple iterations while facing unexpected challenges. One can
begin to see how Luisa’s approach to tinkering and ability to work
through challenges was made possible through an embracing of
the iterative design process as well as with the social and
pedagogical supports made available in the learning environment.
6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Moving beyond focusing on “failure,” Vossoughi et al. [27] have
emphasized the importance of iteration/drafts as an equity-
oriented approach to engaging youth in working through
challenging moments while tinkering. They note the crucial role
of pedagogy—through teacher talk and gesture—in providing
space for youth to learn through iteration and drafts. These
iterative practices in turn, relate to a set of equity-oriented design
principles for tinkering such as “building generous learning
environments” and “widening definitions of learning, intelligence,
and science” [27] (p. 4).
This paper illustrates how youth and educators made sense of and
valued tinkering’s iterative design process, building dispositions
that embraced challenges to work through frustration. In
interviews, girls described how tinkering’s iterative design
process was made meaningful by the creative authorship they
were given to not only take ownership over their ideas, but also
over the challenges involved in pursuing their designs. Yet this
was made possible because of the pedagogical supports and
learning environment educators provided for girls to feel safe
tinkering. Developing a space where girls could try out ideas,
figure out problems alongside both peers and adults, and ask any
questions without feeling like the end-results of their efforts
would define either their ability or intelligence was important to
supporting the iterative design process. This resulted in a program
culture that valued process over product.

Girls then celebrated their “processes over products” at Maker
Faire 2015 as Elena and her partners proudly displayed four wave
shields that they had soldered but couldn’t make function, or as
Ali and Erin demonstrated an unfinished light-up outfit to Maker
Faire visitors. Unlike most Maker Faire presenters, the Techbridge
girls willingly shared their non-functioning iterations of projects
and felt comfortable recognizing that tinkering involved a
continuous process of design and redesign. They demonstrated a
widened definition of what it meant to learn and be smart through
the support of their afterschool educators. The Techbridge girls
were not focused on “failing fast” or “failing forward,” but rather
on learning through process and continuously perfecting their
iterations/drafts.
Instead of using “failure” as a framework for learning, the
Techbridge girls and educators emphasized an alternative set of
values regarding the power of the iterative design process in
tinkering. This allowed for a more generative approach to
engaging with STEM practices such as asking questions,
designing and testing models, making observations, and
redesigning through their tinkering projects. Girls were willing to
take on unexpected challenges not because they wanted to “fail,”
but because they wanted to work through multiple iterations of
their own designs.
Techbridge creates a learning space for girls to take risks in
pursuing their ideas, to have agency in choosing their projects, to
exercise their own approaches in creating, and to accept iterations
as a part of the scientific process. This type of learning space is
not often available to low-income or historically marginalized
communities yet is essential for learners to see the array of
problem-solving approaches they can take to work through STEM
concepts and skills. To that end, we are interested in the ways this
approach to tinkering and learning makes STEM concepts and
skills more meaningful for all youth.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the Techbridge girls who participated in
this study and acknowledge the input, support, and guidance
provided by CTAN members, including but not limited to
Bronwyn Bevan, Veronica Cortez, Meg Escudé, Melody Felten,
Emilyn Green, Erin Gutierrez, Shu Ping Guan, Manuel
Hernandez, Paul Pooler, Mia Shaw, Molly Shea, Kayla Shields,
and Shirin Vossoughi. We also are grateful for the input and
support of the Exploratorium Tinkering Studio, particularly Luigi
Anzivino, Nicole Catrett, Ryan Jenkins, Lianna Kali, Walter
Kitundu, Sebastian Martin, Ryoko Matsumoto, Mike Petrich, and
Karen Wilkinson. This work was made possible through the
support of the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and the National
Science Foundation.
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