Connecting learning: parents and young children in museum makerspaces

This chapter focuses on the role of families, usually parents but sometimes grandparents or other relatives or caregivers, in facilitating young children’s activities in museum makerspaces. It argues that parents can play a role in connecting or disconnecting learning across people and sites, especially when children are young. The chapter explores how this role is conceived and how it can be intentionally designed. Museum makerspaces present opportunities and challenges within the aim of involving parents with young children in the process of making. Planning for whole families is demanding in terms of resources, and because facilitators generally know little of parents’ skills, concerns or circumstances. Some parents engaged in what initially seemed to be ‘babysitting’ but instead turned out to be a subtle form of supervision. Some parents took a more hands-on approach to scaffolding their child’s learning in the makerspace, e.g. by physically assisting in the creation of a designed artefact.