Maker spaces, walking, and mentorship as ways to develop transversal skills

This essay describes two experiments in a transformative, transversal education that rely on uniquely different pedagogies and epistemologies connected to art and artmaking. The first example explores a STEAM education maker space among Indigenous students in New Mexico. The second example is an experiential learning project using walking with others to explore ideas about enlightenment, empathy, and wholeness framed by Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas of Nepal. These experiences provided a window into transversal competence within the contexts of STEAM education, belief, spirit, and emotional resiliency. These two projects describe pedagogical competencies, including mentorship, developing cultural awareness, emotional well-being and whole-person development that respond to critical issues for shaping today’s world. The maker space embraced transversal competencies and thinking dispositions connected to studio habits of mind such as paying attention, developing craft, persistent sustained investigation, envisioning and empathy. The author sought collaborative cross-fertilization in sites that embody concern about responding to our collective crisis and future in creative multidisciplinary ways.