Makerspaces in Singapore: Design, making and innovation

Abstract

In Singapore, there have been numerous calls for education to prepare individuals for participation in innovative economic processes, increasing in magnitude especially since the launch of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation around the turn of the century. The economic imperative has always been, and will probably remain for the foreseeable future, a prime existential driver of policy in Singapore, However, an argument exists that for education, more intrinsic purposes ought to be considered: in addition to being a more ethically defensible position, the non-trivial problem of predicting the future based on past events may pose too great a risk to policy planning, especially when changes take many years to see results. With makerspaces in education, there is great temptation to jump on the bandwagon, and deploy this cultural technology with little critical appreciation. In light of our knowledge from the deployment of computing and information technologies, it might be wise to consider carefully how makerspaces ought to be deployed. In this paper, I will expand on the foregoing arguments, to also make some recommendations on curricula and instructional principles for the wise deployment of makerspaces for high educative value.