Social discussion of CS in K-12

["Wolske, Martin B" <mwolske AT illinois.edu>]

Hi all,

My colleague, Colin Rhinesmith, has taken lead in authoring a paper 
considering theoretical foundations informing our Community Informatics 
Studio class. At one point in our conversation, he recommended we consider 
Kincheloe’s "Critical Constructivism”, and recommended a primer Kincheloe’s 
written. After reading the first couple of chapters, I think there’s much to 
like to describe not only my teaching approach at GSLIS, but also the work 
happening at Kenwood. Constructivism is rooted more in Piaget, while 
constructionism is rooted more in Papert. Both draw from Dewey. Critical 
constructivism is more focused on social construction of knowledge, building 
from the ways the history and interest of learners direct construction of 
knowledge in collaboration with others. Papert’s constructionism is more 
about how learners engage in conversation with artifacts and how those 
conversations foster self-directed learning. Together, I think they more 
fully inform my work, and I suspect the work at Kenwood.

I’m attaching a scan of chapter 1, plus the section of chapter 2 that 
outlines the teacher knowledge base when working within critical 
constructivism. I’m also attaching the submitted draft of Colin and my paper 
if anyone is interested in how we have incorporated these and other 
influences into our teaching pedagogy at GSLIS. Since it’s just a submitted 
draft, please don’t distribute to others without first touching base with me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

— Martin