How teaching is sequenced
Teaching changes with the learner’s stage on the Changemaker Journey. The main thing that changes is who supplies the problem:
- Explorer: nobody. There is no problem yet, only things to try.
- Maker: the course, through a project brief.
- Innovator: a real setting, which the learner narrows down.
- Changemaker: the community, and the learner acts on it.
Each stage has a main way of working, but none is used only at one stage. Direct teaching, projects, hands-on exploration, learning from peers and working with a community all appear at more than one stage. Facilitators mix them to suit the learner, the subject, the safety needs and what the work is for.
| Stage | Main way of working | What the facilitator provides |
|---|---|---|
| Explorer | Hands-on exploration[5] | Materials, an invitation and room to explore. The facilitator keeps the work safe, makes possibilities visible and offers support when it is wanted, without turning exploration into a set task. |
| Maker | Guided project work[15] | A project brief with a clear purpose and step-by-step support, the teaching and techniques it needs, and demonstrations. The starting point may come from the course, the learner, a community or a partner. |
| Innovator | Project-based learning set inside a real challenge[10, 12] | A real situation, help narrowing it into something workable, and whatever knowledge the learner needs. The answer stays the learner’s and the community’s; the facilitator does not take it over. |
| Changemaker | Challenge-based learning that ends in action: engage with the problem, investigate it, act on it | Connections, access, and the questions that test whether the work holds up. |
A challenge that is defined too narrowly holds back the skills it was meant to build[14]. A facilitator short of time is tempted to narrow a challenge until it is really a set project. That is reasonable at the Maker stage and a mistake at the Innovator stage. To avoid it, facilitators name the stage before they plan the session.
Taught sessions and open making
The STEAM programmes run two kinds of session, and both are planned into the timetable.
Taught sessions
Structured sessions that follow a syllabus, with stated entry requirements, learning outcomes and assessed work. This is what a partner institution pays for, and it is what a certificate rests on.
Taught sessions are not a lesser option. Beginners need guidance. The strongest published criticism of discovery-led teaching is that it leaves people to work things out before they know enough to do so[17].
Open making
Free time in which people work on projects of their own choosing, alongside others with more or less experience. It is not assessed. A learner may later hand in something made here as course evidence, if it meets the course criteria.
Open making is a big part of why people keep coming back. It gives them regular contact, friendships with other makers and room to practise without anything due.
A systematic review found that in the later stages of maker work, help from peers works better than structured teaching[26]. Accounts of learning in communities describe the same thing: skill passes from person to person, rather than being handed down[8, 9].
The academy puts open making on the timetable rather than leaving it to spare time. Sessions can be counted and open making cannot, so a fixed slot in the timetable protects it.
What a trainer and facilitator do
A trainer is a content expert who teaches specific knowledge, skills or frameworks. A facilitator is a process expert who guides a group to its own insights, solutions and decisions. One person can be both, and in a session usually is.
In practice, the person running a session does three different jobs[14].
Organiser
Gets the materials ready, checks the tools work, makes the space safe, plans the session and forms the group. Without this, nothing else happens.
Trainer
Teaches directly where it is needed: a technique, an idea, a safety procedure. In a first year, more of the time goes on this kind of teaching than people expect.
Coach
Judges what a learner needs: a question, an explanation, a demonstration, more practice, or space to work it out. Runs the talk-through, where the learner explains their work. Helps someone treat a failure as information about what to change, rather than as a judgement on them.
The skill that takes longest to build is knowing which of the three jobs a moment calls for. Coaching a learner who simply does not know how to use the tool wastes both their time. Telling the answer to a learner who is one question away from working it out takes the learning away.
Teaching mixed groups
Learners are placed by what they can show they can do, not by age. So a session usually has people with different amounts of experience in it. Where safeguarding and supervision arrangements allow, it may also have people of different ages. Facilitators plan for that.
- Set tasks that are easy to start and have no upper limit. A beginner should be able to finish the brief simply, and an experienced learner should be able to keep extending it.
- Let learners teach each other. A learner explaining their build to someone newer is practising the talk-through. With a large group, this is one of the most useful things a facilitator can draw on.
- Assess against the course level, not against the room. A learner’s work is judged against the marking guide (rubric) for the course level they enrolled in, never against the strongest person present.
- Do not publish a typical age as a guide to readiness. People read it as a rule. Where an activity has a legal or safeguarding age requirement, publish that separately and say why it applies.
How facilitators are supported
In this kind of education, quality depends most on how skilled the facilitators are. The evidence is good that those skills can be built. Structured training for teachers improves what they know about learning by making, and how they think about it, including in low-income rural areas[30].
DreamSpace Academy supports its facilitators in these ways:
- Induction covers the stages, the completion standard, how to run a talk-through, safety, and the equipment a facilitator will use. How the teaching works matters as much as the machines, and it is the part most easily skipped.
- A shared stock of challenges and projects, so that no facilitator starts from a blank page with every new group. Writing new projects is the heaviest regular task in the role.
- Ready-made assessment formats, tracking templates and certification guidance, so each site does not have to invent its own.
- A check on what was taught: which parts of the curriculum were actually delivered. It is run as a support conversation, not an audit.
Quality and safety
A certificate is only worth as much as the conditions it was issued under. So two systems sit alongside certification. They matter more when the same course runs in more than one place.
Learner assessment
The criteria are published before work begins, in words learners can use, and applied to similar kinds of evidence for everyone. Assessment formats, progress-tracking templates and certification guidance are kept centrally and given to every site, so no site has to invent its own.
Site quality checks
Every site works to:
- a shared quality framework, reviewed from time to time
- standard operating procedures
- guidance on laying out the space, and on maintenance
- reporting templates
- a check on which parts of the curriculum were actually delivered.
Safety
- Rules for using 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC routers (computer-controlled cutting machines), and for soldering and electronics work.
- Ventilation and electrical standards written into the plan for the space from the start, not added afterwards.
- Child safety and safeguarding based on recognised frameworks: safety first, designed for children, accessibility, inclusivity and equity[53].
- Quality based on the principles widely used to judge large educational technology programmes: ask why, design for all, empower facilitators, engage the ecosystem, be data-driven[54].
The replication page explains how this works when sites are run independently.
What is still hard about facilitation
- Soft results are hard to check. Persistence, judgement, teamwork and confidence are what facilitators most want to certify, and they are the hardest things to show evidence for. The academy uses two things together to get at them: the talk-through and the learner’s reflection on their work. They are not a proof.
- One person cannot facilitate every subject well. Covering many subjects takes rotation, visiting specialists, and facilitators who are comfortable not being the most expert person in the room.
- Open making does not show up in reports. It produces no completion numbers. So it has to be protected in the timetable, because it would not survive on numbers alone.
- Judging when a group is ready for an open challenge takes experience. Experienced facilitators make that judgement well. The academy has not yet worked out how to describe it on paper, which makes it slower to pass on.