Recovering Constructionism in computer science: Design of a ninth-grade introductory computer science course

Constructionism provided an early justification for children to study computers, but today’s dominant approaches to K-12 computer science education are vulnerable to some of the same critiques Papert (1980) made of traditional schooling. In this paper, we identify three themes of Constructionism (computing cultures, material intelligence, and liberatory pedagogy) and use them to analyze existing approaches to K-12 computer science education. We then use these themes as design goals for a Constructionist ninth-grade introductory computer science course which is currently being implemented. This paper is part of a larger research project whose goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a course focused on fully realizing the ambitious epistemological goals of Constructionism. As we contribute to a vision for K-12 computer science education, we hope to help recover the central role of Constructionism.

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APA

Proctor, C., Han, J., Wolf, J., Ng, K., & Blikstein, P. (2020). Recovering Constructionism in computer science: Design of a ninth-grade introductory computer science course. In B. Tangney, J. Rowan Byrne, & C. Girvan (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2020 Constructionism Conference. (pp. 473-481). Dublin, Ireland: University of Dublin.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{proctor_2020_recovering,
  title = {Recovering Constructionism in Computer Science: {{Design}} of a Ninth-Grade Introductory Computer Science Course},
  booktitle = {Constructionism 2020},
  author = {Proctor, Chris and Wolf, Jacob and Ng, Krates and Blikstein, Paulo},
  editor = {Tangney, Brendan and Byrne, Jake Rowan and Girvan, Carina},
  year = {2020},
  pages = {473--481},
  address = {{Dublin, Ireland}},
  isbn = {978-1-911566-09-0}
}