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projects are as successful as the Amplino project. However, they nonetheless have
educational value.
Given the technical nature of such projects it is tempting to see this as teaching
students certain technical abilities, while allowing them to 'geek out'. However,
students also learn about the underlying scientific concepts (education), and occa-
sionally even push the boundaries of scientific knowledge (research). Furthermore,
students are trained on a constructionist tinkering approach to problem solving, which
is a skill valuable for lifelong learning, also outside educational institutions.
Observation 2
Tinkering projects in education typically strive to teach various
technical objectives such as programming skills, understanding of digital hardware,
and rapid prototyping skills. However, in addition scientific education may also
benefit from the tinkering approach by inducing playful interaction with scientific
knowledge, exploration of a problem domain, and solution ownership by students.
8.4
Tinkering Across Various Learning Environments
It is important to realize that tinkering can take place in a variety of learning envi-
ronments. As an experiential learning approach it is grounded in making learning
in educational institutions resemble more the learning that occurs in the real world
during one's lifetime. In other words, tinkering can be used as a learning tool all the
way from nursery to PhD research. It also applies to environments outside schools
and universities. Science museums have adopted tinkering as a means of knowledge
creation and transfer. The San Francisco-based Exploratorium museum for science,
art and human perception extended its vision of playful science education (Oppen-
heimer
1972
) with an in-house Tinkering Studio (www.tinkering.exploratorium.edu).
Multinationals are throwing hackathons to encourage corporate tinkering and prob-
lem solving, and to improve recruitment (Overfelt
2012
). Grass-roots communities
form on Meetup.com and other networks around typical tinkering subjects such as
creative coding, interactive physical systems and DIY biotechnology.
Observation 3
Tinkering as an educational approach applies across the entire
lifecycle of learning, both within and outside traditional learning institutions.
In our case, we are particularly interested in the role of educational tinkering within
an academic research-oriented environment. Scientific research is a knowledge-
driven activity, geared towards answering questions and generating new knowledge.
Although exploration is an important force in science (Doherty
2008
), typically sci-
entific research is brought about through rigorous and methodical work, in which
the exploratory and playful nature of tinkering has only limited place. The emphasis
in science is typically on testing the validity of theories, hypotheses, methods, tools
and other scientific end products, as opposed to providing the creative process and
tools to discover and generate these. Furthermore, research agenda's may be based
on timed delivery of knowledge products, something that does not evidently match
the open-ended nature of tinkering. Finally, in research-based education, one may be
