Powerful Ideas from a Child Cultivated in a FABLAB

Abstract

This study presents a case study of the experience of a 12-year-old child with advanced learning needs (ALN), who transitioned from the formal education system to a homeschooling modality (Choi and Kim, 2021). This change was driven by the need to provide a more flexible and responsive environment suited to his cognitive and emotional profile, characterized by high levels of curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, and emotional sensitivity. The child currently attends a university-based FabLab on a regular basis, where he participates in STEAM learning projects involving technologies such as 3D printing, Arduino-based electronics, augmented and virtual reality, as well as maker activities focused on the collaborative construction of a ROVER for simulated space exploration.

The study adopts an ethnographic case study design and is methodologically framed within a qualitative approach using data collection techniques based on prolonged field observations and semi-structured interviews (Creswel, 2017). The analysis is guided by a critical and interdisciplinary theoretical perspective that integrates three conceptual frameworks: (1) Seymour Papert’s (1980) notion of powerful ideas, understood as those that transform ways of thinking, enabling the construction of a complex intellectual system without taking incomprehensible steps; (2) Bruno Latour’s (1987) concept of the laboratory as a sociotechnical network, which helps conceptualize the FabLab as a distributed epistemic ecosystem; and (3) Wendy Ross’s (2022) idea of scientific serendipity, which emphasizes the unexpected emergence of creative connections in exploratory artifact-building contexts. These frameworks are interpreted through the interdisciplinary lens of 4E Cognition (embodied, enacted, embedded, extended), allowing for an understanding of the child’s cognition not as a purely brain-bound process, but as a situated, embodied, active phenomenon extended through technologies, materials, and human relationships (Videla, Veloz y Pino, 2023).

The ethnographic findings suggest that the FabLab functions as a rich learning environment where the child not only engages with advanced curricular content (physics, geometry, mathematics, and computational thinking), but also constructs meaning through material and social interaction. This occurs during the construction of a space simulation ROVER, which involves building an aluminum chassis, a high-traction four-wheel (off-road) system with electric motors on each wheel, a control system using Arduino and a motor driver, a Bluetooth module, a camera with a servo motor for rotation and adjustments, 12V batteries, and a 3D-modeled and printed structure.

The study documents the development of sophisticated metacognitive skills, spontaneous hypothesis generation, abductive reasoning, complex problem-solving, and moments of serendipity—alongside growing self-confidence and self-efficacy. On an emotional level, a strong bond with the project emerges, as well as a sense of epistemic belonging to the “sociotechnical laboratory” space, in contrast to the child’s previous experience of exclusion within the traditional school system.

This work offers a critical reflection on the role of technological and sociomaterial environments in the education of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), particularly in non-traditional contexts such as home education connected to university spaces. The FabLab is not simply viewed as a fabrication space, but as a cultural and cognitive environment that fosters the emergence of powerful embodied ideas, epistemic agency, and self-trust.