Designing Constructionist Futures: The Art, Theory, and Practice of Learning Designs

Abstract

In Mindstorms, Seymour Papert (1980), who worked closely with Jean Piaget, argued that children could learn to use computers to suit their own needs and that “learning to use computers can change the way they learn everything else” (p. 8). This early idea that young children could construct artifacts with technological tools, through which they were able to have powerful ideas of their own, shaped conceptions of constructionism, a framework for understanding learning that was transformative for many scholars and practitioners. While early conversations about constructionism focused on LOGO, a programming language designed specifically for children to learn to program, constructionism has always been about more than computers. In Designing Constructionist Futures: The Art, Theory, and Practice of Learning Designs, editors Nathan Holbert, Matthew Berland, and Yasmin B. Kafai note that constructionism’s core goal has been “to respect children as creators, to enable them to engage in making meaning for themselves through construction, and to do this by democratizing access to the world’s most creative and powerful tools” (p. 1).More than fifty years later, Designing Constructionist Futures brings together 38 chapters by more than 50 contributors that extend ideas connected to constructionism for today’s learners and today’s tools. The book is divided into five related sections: “Increasing Scale,” “Supporting Equity,” “Expanding the Social,” “Developing the Creative,” and “The Future of Constructionism.” While there seem to be an overwhelming number of chapters and contributors in this volume, the editors write in their introduction that they “asked these authors to be brief in their writing” (p. 10), suggesting that interested readers dive into citation rabbit-holes as needed. In this sense, this volume can be understood more as a guide, a map to the vast lands of constructionism, rather than as the exhaustive arbiter of what is—and is not—constructionism.As the editors note, constructionism has also been seen as something that might only happen within rarefied settings, far away from mainstream preK–12 classrooms. In the first two sections, scholars seek to address perceptions of constructionism as a “boutique theory” for “individual learners and small classrooms [that] would not scale up to districts and massive communities” (p. 17) and critiques of constructionism as associated with the maker movement, which “can lead to problematic assumptions about the critical values of making” (p. 113), such as a failure to consider who is able to make and what they are able to make. One of the ways that constructionism has been taken up is through the maker movement, commonly associated in mainstream discourse with expensive hardware and leisure time spent in distinct physical spaces (3D printers, robots, makerspaces). This particular form of the maker movement, which often fails to consider the ways marginalized populations have made things for their own survival, has become widely criticized for being predominantly privileged, white, male, and corporatized (Barton, Tan, & Greenberg, 2016; Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, 2016).In the first section, a number of chapters focus on the expanse of possibilities related to Scratch, a widely used children’s programming language, while other chapters focus on stories of constructionism in non-US contexts, such as Thailand and Greece. In the second section, Kylie Peppler, Anna Keune, and Naomi Thompson provide descriptive examples of how traditionally feminine practices and materials (e.g., fiber crafts like weaving and sewing) can support STEM learning within the maker movement, and Kristin A. Searle, Brenne K. Litts, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Yasmin B. Kafai, Teresa Casort, Stephanie Benson, and Sequoia L. Dance tell a story of Indigenous youth working with a community artist to create digital tours that map community stories. In the third and fourth sections, contributors extend constructioni