Constructive Technology as the Key to Entering the Community of Learners

Abstract

From 1999 to 2002, the author was the principal investigator and one of three architects of an alternative learning environment operated inside The Maine Youth Center, the state’s troubled juvenile detention facility. Guided by the learning theory of constructionism, a multi-age, interdisciplinary technology-rich learning environment was created to support the development of personally meaningful projects based on student interest, talent and experience. Students in the Constructionist Learning Laboratory (CLL) often classified as learning disabled, engaged in rigorous learning adventures and developed positive personal behaviours in a context free from traditional curricula, behaviourism or other aspects of coercion. Personal and collaborative long-range student projects incorporated powerful ideas from mathematics, science, computer science, engineering and the arts. Sophisticated projects resulted from a more expansive view of technology that included programming, robotics, woodworking and communications via a variety of media. Completed projects and detailed explanations of both product and process demonstrate evidence of the construction of knowledge. Unlike many school projects, CLL students had to contend with what Seymour Papert calls the “resistance of reality.” In other words, their projects had to work, not just pass. The intrinsic motivation and rigorous engagement at the heart of this process is of critical importance. Technology played an enormous role in not just improving self-esteem, but in affording students the chance to be mathematicians, scientists and engineers. This research suggests the viability of Papert’s constructionism as a foundation for designing productive learning environments, not only for a transient population of at-risk teens, but the broader learning community. This paper will also document new constructionist approaches to teaching and learning with computational materials. Future research might investigate if similar approaches to teaching and learning not only reverses the effects of school on at-risk learners, but may be used to design learning environments that place fewer students at-risk in the first place.