Reframing Maker Education in Teacher Education: Towards a Cumulative Field

Maker Education adapts the ethos of interest-driven, project-based artefact creation that defines the maker movement to formal educational contexts. Drawing on Papert’s constructivism, it positions hands-on creation - analogue and digital - as an effective means of developing 21st-century skills, with teachers as facilitators of learning. Our editorial team has extensive experience with Maker Education projects and has spent several years integrating maker pedagogy into pre-service and in-service teacher training, through which we have consistently identified gaps this Research Topic seeks to address.This special issue extends the discussion initiated by the Frontiers Research Topic “Maker Education: Opportunities and Challenges.” Unlike broader K-16 maker education topics, which span the full pipeline from early childhood through higher education, this Research Topic is exclusively dedicated to teacher training - not as one strand among several, but as the central lens for the field’s next phase.Over the past five years, systematic reviews have shown that although a substantial body of evidence exists, the research landscape remains methodologically heterogeneous and comparatively underdeveloped, particularly regarding teacher training. Since 2021, the field has changed significantly: generative AI has entered maker environments, with maker education increasingly framing itself as an “anti-shallow” epistemic practice that counters the reproductive, outsourced use of AI. Sustainability and ethical dimensions have moved to the center of how “making” is conceived pedagogically, yet it is becoming apparent that making does not automatically develop sustainability skills without conscious pedagogical design.This Research Topic invites contributions describing the next phase of Maker Education research along the spectrum from Critical Making to Creative Learning. Empirical studies that go beyond small-scale qualitative case studies and offer methodological diversity are particularly welcome, showing how experiences from teacher training transfer into classroom practice. Conceptual and practice-oriented contributions on the foundations and forms of Maker Education in teacher training are equally welcome, as are those specifying the professional knowledge teachers develop - competences remain one of the least specified outcomes in this field.Two lenses distinguish this Research Topic from adjacent maker education scholarship. First, generative AI is a defining, structural theme rather than a passing reference: we seek work on the pedagogical, epistemic, and ethical competences teachers need to use GenAI critically in maker contexts, not just accounts of tools adopted. Second, we especially encourage submissions from outside North America, where research on teacher training in Maker Education remains geographically limited.We invite papers addressing: (1) transformative learning objectives, such as sustainability competences, critical thinking, critically reflected entrepreneurial competences, and ethical innovation; (2) pedagogical infrastructure, including AI as a tool for making and the competences teachers need to use it critically; or (3) equity-oriented school transformation. We welcome original research, systematic reviews, conceptual analyses, policy and practice reviews, and perspective articles. Topic editors: Holger Weitzel, Wolfgang Mueller, Laura Farinetti, Madelen Bodin Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85538/reframing-maker-education-in-teacher-education-towards-a-cumulative-field