Exploring Constructionism Part 1: A Brief History
This is the first part in a three-part article in my journey to discovering what constructionism is, its history, key architects and its social significance in today’s learning landscape. The purpose of this writing is to kick-off my own learning journey in my first semester as a PhD student at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. As my understanding of constructionism expands, I would like to further develop these ideas into a submitted journal article.
- Part 1: A Brief History
- Part 2: Beyond Mindstorms, Social Implications of Constructionism
- Part 3: Constructionism in 2020 and Beyond
In 2009 I was teaching science in the rural public education system in South Texas and had recently become a volunteer for the local FIRST Robotics program where I helped to officiate competitions. These FIRST Robotics competitions provide a special world where students who have worked many days and hours to build a sophisticated robot, show up in their most proud moment to share their hard work and spirit. The stage is set with colorful flags, disco lights, loud music, mascots, cheerful glee and shared ethos of being a part of something truly unique.
I was drawn to these competitions, not because of the cool robots and flashing lights of competitive robot sports, but because I could see the enthusiasm shining in my students that was absent in my classroom. Naturally I was curious to understand more and have been driven ever since to uncover the magic that I witnessed at these events. With my new found curiosity, I immediately set out to understand the motivating factors that could hold such enthusiasm in these students.
Fast forward ten years, after starting a makerspace, a mobile makerspace, several more robotics competitions, conferences, professional development workshops, and tons of research in the field, I am starting my PhD in Thailand at Chiang Mai University and will be studying under a special group of people who have worked tremendously to carry forward a learning theory called constructionism, a term pioneered by Seymour Papert, who in his own right (pardon the Harry Potter reference) is the Dumbledore of this movement.
For someone like myself and others who have come to learn about Seymour and constructionism in modern times, we have had to put together the puzzle pieces and develop our own understanding of constructionism, which my professor, Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat says “is the only way to understand what constructionism is; you have to build your own understanding of what it is… and Seymour intentionally never provided a definitive answer to that.”
In my quest to construct my own definition and understanding, I decided to conduct a series of interviews with some people who have been deeply involved in the movement and who worked with Papert in some way: Cynthia Solomon, Walter Bender, David Cavallo, Paulo Blikstein and Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat. Through these interviews and by reading published papers and books on the subject I will attempt to compose a brief history of the movement (for my own understanding) which will surely be missing names and events of important projects, as I have come to learn just how massive this community has grown and to the scale at which the influence has spread.
Early Days of Constructionism
In my interview with Cynthia Solomon, she spoke about the early days in the mid 1960’s when Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky worked together at MIT in the newly created Artificial Intelligence Lab where new ideas about AI were first being developed. It was at this time that Seymour’s interest in learning found a place where he could test ideas and use new powerful tools in computing. As a student of the famed child psychologist, Jean Piaget, Papert was deeply interested in how children develop or construct new ideas, how children make meaning and how learning builds mental models. According to Solomon, these ideas were the inspiration for the creation of the first programming language designed with children in mind, called Logo in which she helped to co-develop with Papert and others. Hearing directly from Cynthia about the early days really helped me to see how Papert’s ideas were truly beyond his time, especially given the limited access of computing power then and knowing now the massive potential of AI. Cynthia said that “one often overlooked piece of this puzzle was Marvin Minsky’s contribution” and she pointed me to a newly released book about Marvin’s views on education called Inventive Minds.
In Inventive Minds, Marvin explains the power of Logo by describing it as “a language that you can construct with, much like you could with wooden blocks or construction kits”. Beyond that, Marvin also describes language as a way that communities form, which means that the Logo language holds the potential to build new communities using this digital literacy. All of these years later, Logo has certainly led to the growth of an entirely new community, and just like any language, it has evolved linguistically and socially over the years.
First Generation Students of Papert
1980 saw the publication of Papert’s book Mindstorms, which became a historic milestone for the movement. In Mindstorms, Papert shared his vision for ubiquitous and free access to computers for children, literacy in computer programming and he articulated his vision of how children construct mental models using a computer as well as ways for best providing a nurturing environment for this type of learning to flourish. This publication has gone on to influence many people in education and technology. I still love Papert’s explanation of juggling written as a simple computer program in the book. Because of this work, many new students were drawn to study with Papert.
In my interview with Paulo Blikstein and Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat, they both recognized that there was a heyday of Papert’s students that they remember from the MIT Media Lab, students like Mitchel Resnick who went on to develop Scratch, Uri Wilensky who went on to develop new versions of Logo, Idit Harel who contributed to the pedagogical research in constructionism and Yasmin Kafai who went on to study gender in computers as well as electronic textiles. I apologize in advance for the many others that I have left out, the timeline starts to really spread out like a spiderweb at this point.
It was during this heyday of growth in constructionism that things really began to take off, so much so that the Lego group caught wind and struck up a collaboration to develop innovative tools for children that eventually led to the development of the Lego Mindstorms robotics system (the system used in FIRST Robotics that inspired me to jump down this rabbit hole).
While constructionism was growing its wings with new students, new research projects and now with Lego support, it started to really cement itself as a movement. Though, in Papert’s seminal work, Mindstorms the word constructionism isn’t even mentioned once. At this point in the movement, even the people involved weren’t using the term, from what I can piece together. It wasn’t widely used until later when the pedagogy was more closely researched and written about, especially by the time the book Constructionism (1990) was published. Written by Idit Harel and Seymour Papert, Constructionism provided a detailed case for the theory of constructionism along with findings of studies that brought validity to the term. From 1980 when Mindstorms was written and 1990 when Constructionism was written, great leaps were made in the direction of the movement which now included many more students and research projects spanning across the globe. I will explore a few of these specific research cases in more detail in part two of this series.
Second Generation of Students of Papert
From the early 1990’s to the mid 2000’s there were many new students of Papert and students of students of Papert that continue to carry the legacy forward. As the family tree began to grow, so did the wide influence of constructionism. Both Paulo Bliksten and Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat consider themselves as part of this second generation of Papert’s students and both have gone on to carry constructionism’s mission to the world through cultivated efforts like FabLearn and constructionism projects in Thailand. Even younger students in this era have helped to grow the movement in new directions, like Jay Silver who studied under Mitchel Resnick and later went on to invent the Makey Makey circuit board. It is also in this era when Papert’s focus shifted a bit from his research in learning and epistemology at MIT to expanding his vision globally to places like Costa Rica, Brazil and Thailand. Eventually leading to a grand vision of every child owning and using a laptop.
Along with support from leadership at the MIT Media Lab, Papert set out on a grand quest with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to provide a low-cost, easy to use, computing platform to children all over the world with impressive results in places like Uruguay and Nepal. Though there has been much skepticism and criticism of the project on a whole, “OLPC was rooted more in the idea of spreading opportunity to constructionist learning than providing hardware” according to Walter Bender, previous director of the Media Lab and developer of the OLPC operating system, Sugar. I think that given the affordability of computing power, especially with projects like Raspberry Pi, that today, a project like OLPC could have had much more success.
Third Generation of Students of Papert
Who will carry the torch and how will constructionism evolve or live on? It is up to students or practitioners like me who are deeply interested in learning about the movement, how it has grown and how to best carry it forward. We are the students who grew up using computers, learning to program, learning to build robots and who now study things like Artificial intelligence in education. There are other students who are carrying on the legacy, like Stefania Druga who conducted a thesis at MIT about how children think about and use AI in a platform that she created called Cognimates. There are dozens of practicing educators who share constructionism best practices in a network called the FabLearn Fellows that came from Paulo Blikstein’s research group. These are just a few examples of how constructionism continues to march on.
Constructionism has even gone on to influence other movements like makerspaces in education, computer science for all, educational robotics, invention literacy, and physical computing. With each of these sub-movements growing in their own directions, it starts to paint a giant picture of how one man’s legacy has situated such a strong influence in the field of education.
Please read on to Part 2 of this series where I will explore social implications of constructionism. In the third part of this series, I will explore some criticisms of constructionism and paint a picture of where I think there could be areas for constructionism to expand. By studying the key historical developments of constructionism and by speaking to people who were involved, I have been able to really construct my own understanding of it, which I will present in Part 3. If you feel like there are missing pieces from my puzzle or if you want to contribute to a future publication on the themes of this article please contact me.
