Making Space for Curiosity and Invention in the Classroom

When Clara Mabour, AG27, was a Florida high school teacher, she took a gamble and shared a box of discarded electronics with the restless ninth graders in her morning study hall. It would prove illuminating.

The students jumped in, free to create whatever they wanted, she said. And when they realized there weren’t enough screwdrivers to go around? No problem. “Some of them used scissors instead, and just continued to work,” she said.

Mabour was impressed by similar ingenuity among her students when she was awarded grants to support more inventive learning. One after-school group came up with a water agitator–ultimately patented–to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in stagnant water. Another designed a device to help alert newly diagnosed diabetics about their condition. 

She admired the projects not only for their outcomes, but also for what her observations suggested about how making, learning, and invention interconnect. “I wondered what made my students so resourceful and confident,” she said. “I thought: There's something fascinating going on.”

Today Mabour’s fascination continues to thrive at Tufts. A doctoral student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, she is digging deeper into questions about STEM education—the interdisciplinary teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and how youth learn through design and making. 

 Her Ph.D. advisors Brian Gravel, associate professor of education, and Greses Pérez  assistant professor of engineering, advocate for problem-solving with materials that unlock self-expression and widen opportunities for curiosity and creativity. 

While rooted in the Department of Education, Mabour’s Ph.D. is interdisciplinary in scope and impact. Through collaboration with Gravel, she has conducted research on hip-hop in makerspaces as a culturally sustaining context to engage middle schoolers in STEM.  

With a group led by Pérez, the McDonnell Family Assistant Professor in Engineering Education, Mabour also traveled last summer to the Dominican Republic to work on a study of the association between engineering, learning, and language in Haitian-Dominican communities. 

And through a Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) initiative, the Community Tech Press (CTP) project, she joins Tufts faculty exploring how sixth grade students draw on their language and cultural resources when learning about engineering through a climate tech journalism curriculum.

Reflecting on her path to graduate studies, she recalls how it started by dropping in on a virtual open house and finding a community of kindred thinkers, “who didn’t think my ideas [about STEM learning] were crazy,” she said. That community continues to be a vital support, as she looks “for those moments or opportunities that enrich students’ learning.” 

The Extraordinary From Everyday 

Mabour attributes her makerspace mindset to her father, a ceramicist and painter, who, “in one way or another, was always problem solving,” she said. “When we were living in Florida and getting back on our feet after a hurricane, he made a stove out of a metal saltshaker and clothes hanger. And that turned some switch in my brain.”

At Tufts, she has found fertile ground for her curiosity about creative problem-solving through making. In her first year, she was a research assistant with Gravel for the STEMCees, a research group engaging youth in STEM and computer science, using cultural and expressive practices from hip-hop. Student participants designed an interactive graffiti wall, complete with LED lights and music boxes resembling boom boxes that they had wired and controlled with a micro controller. 

“A core element of hip-hop is self-expression,” Mabour said. “It’s important to listen to where the kids are coming from. What is the child's world like? How do traditions and experiences with materials influence what they make and how they make it?” 

Of special interest to Mabour were three girls who expressed their idea of hip-hop culture by making a pair of pants. The design process began with tracing the outline of an old pair of pants, “but then I could see they were thinking, ‘Oh wait; there are two sides to pants!’ They used systems thinking,” said Mabour. “To me, their work demonstrated crafting as a valid activity in STEM education.”

Insights From a Sixth-Grade Classroom   

Expertise in designing curricula and collaborating with teachers is also the focus of Mabour’s work with the Community Tech Press project, which involves developing multilingual and multimodal climate technology and journalism curriculum. Somerville sixth-grade students are supported in using language groups and ways of speaking they use outside of school.

Mabour’s favorite moment in the program was when a group of students thought about putting a carbon capture plant on top of a Dunkin’ Donut, "which is very Boston! It was an exciting way to think about storytelling.”

The main takeaway, she said, is that when learners can sustain meaningful cultural practices, including speaking the languages that they use with their families and in their communities, they are more likely to be engaged in STEM. “We are recognizing that youth learn in different contexts that are not associated with the traditional classroom or in rote learning,” she said.  

Lessons in Progress 

Mabour is grateful for those insights and gives credit to the generous support she receives from faculty, staff, and peers. “I found people who care about what I care about,” she said.  

As she works on her doctoral research, “It gives me a new perspective on learning and how it happens in tiny moments over time, but also a new perspective on humanity,” she said. To observe a student “who's trying to figure out something for hours and then seeing them work through their problem—wow. It makes me think: What are we capable of as humans?”