The
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that the cognitive development of children
goes through four stages: the sensorimotor, the preoperational, the concrete
operational, and the formal operational stage. Piaget’s work led to the theory
of knowledge called constructivism.
The essence of constructivism is that although information, facts, etc. can be
transferred from teacher to student, knowledge
has to be constructed by the
student.
Seymour
Papert, the creator of Logo, the first programming language for kids, took the construction idea, tied it to making
things, and called it constructionism.
As
Edith Ackermann says, “Piaget’s constructivism offers a window into what
children are interested in, and able to achieve, at different stages of their
development.” She goes on to say, “Papert’s constructionism, in contrast,
focuses more on the art of learning, or ‘learning to learn’, and on the
significance of making things in learning.”
Logo,
through the work of Mitchel Resnick and his group at MIT, has evolved to Scratch.
Dr.
Resnick explains the three design criteria used to build Scratch, “Learning
lessons from Papert’s experiences of Logo, we’ve designed Scratch to move
beyond Logo along three dimensions, making programming more tinkerable, more meaningful,
and more social.”
He
goes on to describe the social side of Scratch, “Our development of the Scratch
programming language has been tightly coupled with development of the Scratch Website
and online community. For Scratch to succeed, we feel the language needs to be
linked to a community where people can support, collaborate, and critique one
another and build on one another’s work.”
That
Scratch is a success as a social
constructionism community is reflected in its numbers.
As
of November 21, 2014, these are the Scratch statistics.
Educators and parents interested in students building their knowledge
should take a serious look at Scratch at
www.scratch.mit.edu
and join the community.
Resources:
Piaget’s
Constructivism, Papert’s Constructionism: What’s the difference?
Future of
Learning Group
MIT Media
Laboratory
Resnick,
Mitchel. (2012)
Educational Technology, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 42-46.
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