From signal to noise: Resituating maker pedagogies ‘from the sound up’

Maker initiatives in education developed over recent decades through the intersection of DIY culture, the Maker movement and constructionist theories of learning. Scholars in music education have recently advocated for the adoption of ‘maker’ pedagogies to enhance and reshape music learning, link students with emerging technologies and innovative creative practices and integrate music-centred maker technologies to support STE(A)M initiatives. This article draws upon a recent music makerspace study that invited participants to build their own analogue modular synthesizers and learn through the process of instrument building, troubleshooting, testing and sound-making. Using this study, we examine claims about ‘maker education’, address gaps in the research and literature on making and highlight tensions in attempts to translate ‘making’ from authentic informal learning environments to formal ones in educational institutions. Our findings challenge celebratory claims about ‘maker education’ as well as identify missing modalities of learning – forms of practical knowledge, embodied skill, modes of inquiry and co-emergent competencies that are rarely examined or acknowledged in the literature on making. We conclude with a discussion of what aims – and whose purposes – are served when context-specific practices and epistemologies are recontextualized for formal educational environments or retooled to serve academic theory.