ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the work the team undertook on the development of an assessment tool, which was used to identify the characteristics of effective learning that could be discerned as children engaged in making. It explores issues relating to assessment in makerspaces. The chapter outlines an approach used in the Sheffield project to assess Characteristics of Effective Learning. It provides other approaches to assessment in makerspaces based on documentation and the development of narratives. The disciplines that make up Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are viewed as ‘separate domains of knowledge’ tied together for the role they play within the economies of the technological world. Standardised assessment does not demonstrate the kind of measurable outcomes from makerspaces that, in a neo-liberal performative policy context, speak to policymakers. Across all of the makerspaces, social learning was key to the learning experiences.
