Tinkering-EU has run several projects exploring Tinkering’s potential in STEM education. Unlike formal learning methods, Tinkering asks learners to try things out for themselves as they work towards a goal, for which there is rarely one right answer. In a typical exercise, participants are presented with tools or materials and asked to complete a task such as making a machine that can move or constructing a circuit. How they achieve that is up to them, with ideas developing as they start to engage in the activity.

The partners for the most recent project were science education and engagement centres in Austria, France, Italy the Netherlands and Poland. Each collaborated with at least one community organisation which works with a specific group of adults who may feel that science is ‘not for them’ or who generally do not participate in STEM activities. The participants included immigrants and refugees, out-of-work young adults and inmates at a prison.

The activities varied widely. One workshop, for example, asked participants to create art that conveyed a message – such as a warning or political idea – using a micro:bit computer and some basic coding. Another ‘upcycled’ old cardboard items to create usable furniture such as nightstands, chairs and shelves. Some others involved taking apart electronic toys to make new devices, growing ‘mini-gardens’ for the home, or weaving together materials with different properties.

All the partners felt the approach showed promise in several ways. Many found that by collaborating with community organisations, they reached adults who might otherwise never have visited their centre or museum, despite often living nearby. The team at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, for example, welcomed the opportunity to work with people “who do not already know or visit us”, while the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan saw an opportunity to broaden their appeal beyond “the middle class, tourists and school groups.”

Overall, Tinkering did seem to engage the participants. For example, the team from TRACES – a French non-profit specialising in the public communication of science – noted that: “It gave a space for exploration and expression. It was not an activity where we, as facilitators, had to say a lot and they had to listen. The participants had time and space to express themselves. This brought engagement and energy.”

All of the partners are also aiming to maintain their relationship with the community organisations they collaborated with, and to run future Tinkering workshops for adults as well as children.

The project partners intend to maintain their relationship with the community organisations involved, and/or to expand their Tinkering work to include older age groups. The initiative has made them reconsider how they might work with communities of adults whom they had previously thought it impossible to reach.

The Copernicus Science Centre team, for example, reflect in the report that their existing Tinkering activities “perhaps focus too much on kids and teens”. The team from the science and technology museum in Milan, similarly, observe that “Tinkering could, in the long run, help shape a new image of the museum. Rather than being perceived as a place only for the few, it could become a place of belonging for all, encouraging them into just ‘being’ and engaging with science.”

It is likely that more needs to be done to build wider recognition of the potential public value of Tinkering to enable this. The TRACES team, for example, acknowledge its “huge potential” for lifelong learning, “particularly in prisons”. They add, however, that “Public funding bodies do not yet understand the value of Tinkering as a pedagogy for adult learners. The notion of ‘exploratory space’ is not well-known or understood. But at some point, we know we will make this work.”

The authors of the report also suggest that, beyond STEM education specifically, Tinkering is, to some extent, an ‘attitude’ that could characterise a much wider range of learning experiences.

Mark Winterbottom, Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge, said: “We know the value of open-ended, exploratory learning, for engaging young learners in science. In this project, we saw that value for adults, but we also saw how the project helped our partners to reflect on their practice more widely, with a view to generating more inclusive programming. Understanding the value of listening to learners, and giving them ownership and autonomy in their learning, is essential to successful engagement, whether in formal or informal spaces, and whether learning about STEM or something else entirely.”