[IAEP] Concise explanation of Constructionism from the Learning Team

[Bill Kerr]

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 4:15 AM, Seth Woodworth <seth at laptop.org> wrote:

> Inspired by Sameer's recent conversations with a pair of Montessori
> Kindergarden teachers.  I went to talk to Cynthia Solomon of the OLPC
> Learning team.  We got to talking about the theory of Activities and a few
> other topics.  Eventually she showed me this snippit from the Media Lab's
> Future of Learning Group:
> Constructionism
>
> We are developing "Constructionism" as a theory of learning and education.
> Constructionism is based on two different senses of "construction." It is
> grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new
> knowledge, rather than having information "poured" into their heads.
> Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular
> effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful
> artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots).
>
> http://learning.media.mit.edu/projects.html
>
>
> I thought that this explination was concise and really interesting.  I
> would love to explain this to people who want to desige activities, just to
> give them a little snapshot of the concept.  Does anyone have a problem with
> this deffinition? Does anyone have an improvement?
>
>
> -Seth
>

hi Seth,

It could be a mistake to try to summarise a complex idea as a thumbnail.
Cynthia does not do that in her book (*Computer Environments for Children*)
where she compares 4 different approaches to learning. Her description there
of constructivism is far more nuanced with example of logo learning and
historical and philosophical background. Some of the concepts included in
that chapter are -

   - a definition of mathematics
   - people possess different theories about the world
   - children build their own intellectual structures
   - why would they change their theories?
   - intuition
   - natural learning development
   - the role of computers
   - the role of relationship
   - different ways of looking at maths (constructive and intuitive compared
   with rule driven and formal)
   - discussion of turtle geometry
   - other mathematicians who hold similar views - Poincare, Brouwer, Godel)
   - value of an anthropomorphic approach
   - etc. (there is much more)


It's tempting to try to develop a thumbnail definition, it appeals to our
sense of tidiness and closure, but with this complex idea it doesn't seem to
work.

While I was writing this Albert's response appeared which adds another
dimension to the discussion -  oversimplification does make an easier target
for critics. Since your definition does not distinguish Papert's
constructionism from open ended discovery learning then it is easy to
criticise in this way.

The 4 models in Cynthia's book are:
Suppes: Drill and Practice and Rote Learning
Davis: Socratic Interactions and Discovery Learning
Dwyer: Eclecticism and Heuristic Learning
Papert: Constructivism and Piagetian Learning

This illustrates the point that distinctions ought to be made between the
latter three, rather than lumping them all into some exploratory basket.
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