[Its.an.education.project] From Piaget

[Bill Kerr]

hi tony,

not so much a "single cause" but trying to discuss the deeper philosophical
and developmental issues associated with the word - and sorry if I gave the
impression that I had clearly identified a single cause (I do have more to
say than that)

I would say there are many causes at a surface level - you list some of them
- but what is important is to try to dig deeper to underlying more
fundamental reasons (and the piaget article does do that)

what do teachers / educators really need? one possible answer is better
philosophy and understanding of epistemology - insofar as free software and
green machines can be vehicles of that then that will mean success in those
particular environments (more success than in environments that don't tackle
those questions)

if I've moved anywhere its trying to look at the deeper reasons for the
"failure" of constructionism

with regard to this list the description of constructionism as learning by
making and doing is inadequate IMO

with regard to this thread I would say read the Piaget article

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 4:29 PM, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:

> Bill wrote
> > This is why constructionism doesn't scale (yet) - or is dependent on a
> > teacher being there who realises that what is obvious and common sense to
> > them is not obvious or common sense to children. And then finds ways to
> > spend time discussing and experimenting with these common sense notions
> with
> > children - rather than just assuming that everyone "gets it".
>
> Bill
> You have moved from questioning what constructionism might be to ascribing
> a single cause for its not scaling.
>
> The best test that constructionism has had is Logo. Maybe it failed to
> scale because Logo was too hard. Maybe it failed because it was too foreign.
> It certainly seemed to fail at the level of enthusiasts teaching teachers
> who teach students. Maybe the missing element was ordinary teachers lack of
> understanding of what children found hard. But it could have been the tool
> (Logo) not being suitable. It could have been the system not recognising
> success when it happened.
>
> Tony
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