Exploring Constructionism Part 2: Beyond Mindstorms, Social Implications of Constructionism
This is the second part in a three-part article in my journey to discovering what constructionism is, it’s 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. Through my interviews and research, I have come to understand that there is a deeper level of constructionism that deals with how student-centered learning can be fostered because of institutional changes and changes to beliefs and pedagogy about education. This section explores some examples of how constructionism has had a deep impact all over the world and how it has shifted social structures.
- Part 1: A Brief History
- Part 2: Beyond Mindstorms, Social Implications of Constructionism
- Part 3: Constructionism in 2020 and Beyond
It’s not just math and programming
From my initial research, starting back with my interests that stemmed from my experiences with FIRST Robotics, I was initially focused on thinking that constructionism had more to do with technology, programming, hardware and tools. It is highly possible that I was just riding the waves from the makerspace mania that was heavily focused on tools and products. As an educator, I knew that there was a deeper driving factor and continued to investigate further. The examples that I will unfold in this part of Exploring constructionism will help to shed light on how constructionism has benefited students in broader social contexts instead of just looking at constructionism as a learning theory that aids digital literacy.
Gary Stager, another student of Papert who maintains an archive of Papert’s writing, helped to popularize Papert’s Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab (1999) which describes the means for Constructionist learning to be successful. These eight ideas go on to elaborate qualities that describe an optimal learning environment for student success and agency. None of these ideas mention Logo, or specific technologies, but instead paints a broader understanding of constructionism that includes some of Papert’s famous points like “hard fun, learning to learn, and technology as a building material.”
Constructionism inside a Juvenile Detention Center
When I spoke with David Cavallo, another student of Papert who worked on many global projects, he further elaborated on the Eight Big Ideas, because they came from a research project that he worked on with Gary Stager and Seymour Papert inside of a juvenile detention center in Maine where they set up a learning lab for teenagers that had been adjudicated. David mentioned that “this project was really radical for it’s time …something that Seymour was always doing.” From the abstract of the research paper it says that “rather than adjust one element of the learning environment at a time, we created a radically different environment not just for this particular setting, but for any setting. The youth worked in an age and grade integrated, interdisciplinary, open, learner-centered, project-based way, investigating areas of their own choice, learning through design and construction.” David went on to describe how this project impacted the students “that they were shy at first, but began to build agency and take responsibility for their learning and spent hours each day in the lab building robots or constructing guitars.” As a previous makerspace facilitator I can directly corroborate these sentiments that this type of learning environment really does help to build student agency, especially when choice is involved. To me, this single project in Maine really shows that constructionism is more than just programming, computers and robots and has the potential to have a profound effect on students, even students who have been deemed as “at-risk. This also furthers my view of Papert as Dumbledore, the professor of Hogwarts who also sought to guide the troubled youth.
Constructionism in Thailand
In 1997, Seymour Papert embarked on a mission to help start a project in Thailand called Project Lighthouse at a request by an education foundation in Thailand that was interested in Papert’s work. Papert traveled to Thailand on several occasions to work directly with teachers and students from rural areas where professional development was provided to teach logo, project based learning and computer literacy. Just as I have set out to define my own understanding of constructionism, the communities in Thailand also constructed their own unique definition of constructionism that according to David Cavallo, included “practical interventions, project based learning, learning by doing and was infused with aspects of Buddhist practices in mindfulness.” One of David’s papers about Project Lighthouse shares some examples of success from the project that include:
- a fifteen year old Buddhist monk using MicroWorlds Logo and a digital camera to trace the history of Buddhist artifacts in nearby temples to learn about the history of Buddhism in his region, which he then placed on the Web using the MicroWorlds plug-in.
- a multimedia study of traditional herbal medicine; using voice input, digital cameras and MicroWorlds Logo to create a constructionist language learning environment.
- a program to create new variations on traditional fabric patterns from a northern (Thailand) hill tribe.
One of the projects that started from Project Lighthouse is a school in Bangkok called the The Darunsikkhalai School for Innovative Learning (DSIL) that I have personally visited and feel that it is truly one of the most innovative schools on the planet. Read more about this school in a previous article that I wrote about defining a vision and set of values when starting a makerspace. Constructionism has certainly left a mark in Thailand that continues to grow, infact, FabLearn Asia was just held in Jan, 2020 in Bangkok and celebrated countries’ 20-year long history with constructionism.
One Laptop Per Child
Papert may be most well known for his involvement with the famous One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) where he ambitiously set out to provide low-cost computers for children all over the world. At a time where personal computers were usually over $1000 USD, OLPC promised to deliver a $100 USD laptop. Walter Bender, who was a co-founder of OLPC and was the lead software designer said that “Seymour always saw OLPC as a social-justice issue …by providing access to computers.” Papert’s noble cause to even the playing field with access to technology was strife with criticism and failures that eventually led to a collapse of the project. Despite the controversy, there are a few successful implementations of OLPC that describe the larger goals of the project’s intent to provide access, promote learning and grow communities.
An OPLC implementation in Nepal reported that the use of the laptops grew outside of the classroom when a group of mothers began to use the laptops outside of school time to learn language skills and basic arithmetic. According to a report from OLPC “it has created a different level of awareness amongst mothers and girls in the community, and our school has transformed into an open learning place not just for children but for parents as well.” In this example the OLPC laptop provided opportunities for social change, not just access to hardware.
At another OLPC site in Montevideo Uruguay, OLPC laptops were being used beyond the classroom walls in local museums and zoos where projects were developed that allowed families to learn together. According to a report from OLPC, the laptops were being used with families to “participate in a range of activities where they can learn about exhibits while interacting with specially designed projects on the laptop.”
These are just two examples of OLPC implementations around the world, however they both illustrate Papert’s vision of creating social change by providing access to a powerful tool. I believe that like Walter Bender mentioned, that OLPC wasn’t meant to be a hardware company, but instead an organization that aimed to increase social justice by empowering communities with access to knowledge.
Scratch Global Community
You can’t talk about constructionism in 2020 without mentioning the global impact of Scatch. According to the Scratch Foundation, “Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for young people with over 50 million Scratch projects available online.” Scratch was developed at the MIT Media Lab and is a direct descendant of Papert’s Logo that is led by Papert’s student Mitchel Resnick. Resnick proudly holds the title of the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the Lifelong Kindergarten Group inside of the Media Lab. I vividly recall using Scratch for the first time in 2010 and made a simple maze game that I have now used hundreds of times to teach video game design to students and teachers all over the world.
Scratch has set out to realize Papert’s vision that he described in Mindstorms about “the computer being used to program the child” and presented an alternative approach in which “the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.” It may be argued by some that Scratch has lowered the high ceiling of the original Logo programming language, but there is no denying the merit of Scratch in creating a global community of users who freely share projects and inspiration for projects. In a recent article, Mitchel resnick shares his approach with Scratch by saying that “just engaging more students in coding has never been our top priority. Rather, our educational mission is to engage students in thinking creatively, reasoning systematically and working collaboratively — essential skills for everyone in today’s society” This statement makes a strong case that Scratch, like many of Seymour’s inspirations, is rooted in social change more than technological advancement for children.
All of these examples show that constructionism is more than just a way to teach math and computer science, but a much larger epistemology, pedagogy and a vehicle for systemic and institutional changes.
Follow along to the third part of this series where I will explore some criticisms of constructionism and wrap up my understanding of constructionism. I will leave you with a famous quote from Papert that says “You can’t think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something” Just imagine Dumbledore saying that when you read it!
