Stage and course level
The Changemaker Journey is the path learners follow in the STEAM programmes, which are one part of what DreamSpace Academy teaches. It has four stages: Explorer, Maker, Innovator and Changemaker.
A learner’s place is described in two separate ways:
- Stage describes what a learner is trying to do: explore, make, innovate or contribute.
- Course level describes how deep the work goes inside one subject, such as robotics, digital education or music.
Keeping them apart helps in practice. An experienced software learner can start electronics at the foundation level without being treated as a beginner in everything. A fifteen-year-old with a working prototype can be recognised for it, without anyone having to decide whether that is right for their age.
A Changemaker’s documentation is not better than a Maker’s. It is documentation for a different purpose. So stages are never ranked against each other on a skills chart. Levels within a subject are.
What each stage is for
| Stage | The question | What the learner is doing | Entry condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Explorer | “What can I do?” | Trying out tools, materials and ideas, and meeting other learners, with no pressure. Guided, and never assessed. | Open. Walk in. |
| Maker | “Can I make something?” | Focused practice. Building reliable skill in one subject through assessed projects. | Chooses a subject to go deep in. |
| Innovator | “Can I make it better?” | Putting skills to use. Drawing on one or more subjects to look into a real problem and test different answers to it. | Skilled in at least one subject. |
| Changemaker | “Can I make a difference?” | Contributing to a community. Turning tested work into action that lasts. | Has produced work rooted in a community problem, tested by a real user who is not on the project team, that someone depends on. |
The kind of learning is different at each stage. Explorer work is about finding out what is possible and feeling at home. Maker work builds up a set of skills. Innovator work uses those skills on a problem that has not yet been solved where it occurs.
For an Innovator, that may mean adapting a known solution to a different language, material, price or setting. Teaching through open challenges starts to make sense at this stage. Before this stage, it comes too soon[12, 14].
Who counts as a Changemaker
A learner does not become a Changemaker by putting in time, by being keen, or by finishing a course. They become one by producing a grassroots innovation: a piece of work that passes all three of these tests.
- The problem is real and local: people affected by it recognise it as a problem they already have. A learner, facilitator, mentor or partner may be the one who brings it forward. What fails the test is a problem that exists only because the exercise needed one, such as a competition brief written for teams to build against.
- A real user who is not on the project team has tested it: someone the work is for has handled it, not only seen it demonstrated or on display.
- Someone depends on the outcome. The work matters to someone beyond the demonstration.
DreamSpace Academy took the term from research. Studies of grassroots innovation describe work driven by social need rather than profit, and rooted in the community that has the problem[46]. Makerspaces are one of the recognised kinds of grassroots innovation in that research.
A South Asian line of this research records innovation by people who are rich in knowledge but poor in money. It includes empathetic innovators, who solved a problem they did not suffer themselves[47].
The empathetic case matters in practice. A learner does not have to have lived the problem, but they do have to have taken it from someone who did. That is what the first test checks.
It does not matter who pointed the learner to the problem. A mentor, a facilitator or a visiting specialist naming a real community problem is normal here, and it is how most of this work starts. What the test rejects is a problem invented for the exercise.
A separate article sets out what counts, and what happened when the academy applied these tests to its own record.
Course levels
A level belongs to a course, never to a person. Each course publishes its own levels, with the skills needed at each one, the entry requirements, the learning outcomes and the assessed projects. The number of levels depends on how much there is to learn in that subject. No single ladder is forced onto every course.
“Robotics Systems Level 3” means a learner has completed that level of a named course. It does not describe the learner’s general ability. There is no equivalent figure for a whole person: people go to different depths in different subjects, and one number hides that.
Levels exist only inside the Maker stage. There are none at Explorer, because nothing there counts toward a certificate or a level (facilitators still watch the work and give feedback). There are none after Maker, because by then the useful question is no longer “how deep” but “did it work, and for whom”.
The programmes page sets out what a level is made of and how a count is worked out.
Milestones for Innovators and Changemakers
There are no levels at the Innovator and Changemaker stages. Progress there is marked by named milestones on the learner’s profile. Each milestone has a published condition. Whether the work meets it is a matter of judgement. A milestone is never turned into a numbered level or added up with others into a grade.
Innovator milestones
- Problem chosen: a real problem, from outside the classroom
- First user feedback: someone the work is for, or someone affected by the problem, has responded to it. A classmate reviewing it as coursework does not count.
- Response tested in context: tested with the people it is for or affected by it. Where safety or access rules that out, it is tested with a suitable stand-in, and the limitation is recorded.
Changemaker milestones
- Community-rooted work produced: the milestone that makes a learner a Changemaker
- Route chosen: see where learners go next, below
- Measured impact, beyond the course
A technically excellent build that did not start from a community problem, and has not been tested by a real user outside the project team, leaves its maker an Innovator. That is a complete place to end up. Treating the last stage as the only one that counts would give a false picture of how many people reach it.
How learners move from stage to stage
Every course sets out a recommended order. Learners who already have the relevant skills can take a placement check and start further in. Progress depends on showing the required skills and completing the work, not on how long someone has attended.
How many learners move on is something to record, not a target. The academy plans to record how many learners move from Explorer to Maker, and from Maker to Innovator, because that says something useful about its own teaching. That record is not yet in place.
Recording it does not mean learners are supposed to go through every stage in order. A learner who stops at a stage that suits them has not failed anything.
The maker profile
A maker profile is a learner’s record over time. It brings together their completed courses, the skills they have shown and their recorded milestones, kept per subject.
Each of these facts about one learner is useful on its own. They are reported separately rather than combined into a single grade.
The profile is also what lets the academy follow learners over the years. With it, the academy can ask two years later what a learner went on to do. It can ask that of everyone who started, not only of those who finished.
Where learners go next, and how they return
When a learner leaves the journey, they choose a route. The usual routes are:
Impact venture
Into the venture pathway, building something that can pay its own way.
Research or academia
Further study, research placements, university.
Activism & community leadership
Organising, campaigning, or taking a lead in an existing institution.
Employment or freelancing
A job, or independent work built on the skills.
Grow Your Own
Staying to work for DreamSpace Academy itself for a while, which is not the same as forever.
Leaving
People stop. It happens at every stage and every depth, and it is the least understood part of the journey.
They are examples, not a complete list. Learners take routes nobody expected, so the record keeps an other category rather than forcing them into one of these.
Routes overlap and repeat. One person can take more than one route. So any percentage breakdown has to say what it is a percentage of, and has to let one person appear in more than one route. A tidy split adding up to 100% would give a false picture.
Leaving early is one of the routes. Feedback from people who stopped attending matters most here, because feedback gathered only from those who finished cannot show why anyone left. Every stage is meant to record who left and why. That record is not yet in place.
Coming back is normal and expected. Learners leave for a season, a job, an exam year or a family reason, and then return. The record is built to show that pattern, rather than treating each return as a fresh start.
Why age does not determine placement
Where a learner starts is decided by what they can show they can do, not by their age. Age is not used as an entry rule, an age band, a level label, or a “typical age” printed on a brochure.
Age still matters for the things it governs:
- safeguarding
- the legal duty of care
- supervision
- any practical requirement a particular activity has.
DreamSpace Academy once grouped the stages by age, and dropped that design. The reason was practical as much as principled: a typical age printed anywhere is read as a rule. The adult coming back to learn reads it that way, so does the young person who is ready early, and so does the parent wondering whether the course is for their family.
A separate article sets out the reasoning and what it costs.