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Piagetâs Constructivism, Papertâs Constructionism:
Whatâs the difference?
Edith Ackermann
What is the difference between Piaget's constructivism and Papertâs âconstructionismâ? Beyond the mere play on the words, I think the distinction holds, and that integrating both views can enrich our understanding of how people learn and grow. Piagetâs constructivism offers a window into what children are interested in, and able to achieve, at different stages of their development. The theory describes how childrenâs ways of doing and thinking evolve over time, and under which circumstance children are more likely to let go ofâor hold ontoâ their currently held views. Piaget suggests that children have very good reasons not to abandon their worldviews just because someone else, be it an expert, tells them theyâre wrong. Papertâs constructionism, in contrast, focuses more on the art of learning, or âlearning to learnâ, and on the significance of making things in learning. Papert is interested in how learners engage in a conversation with [their own or other peopleâs] artifacts, and how these conversations boost self-directed learning, and ultimately facilitate the construction of new knowledge. He stresses the importance of tools, media, and context in human development. Integrating both perspectives illuminates the processes by which individuals come to make sense of their experience, gradually optimizing their interactions with the world
Prelude
Let me say, as a prelude, that the beliefs we held about childrenâs learning are deeply grounded in our own convictions on what it means to be knowledgeable, intelligent, experienced, and what it takes to become so. Whether implicit or explicitly stated, these convictions drive our attitudes and practices as educators, parents, teachers, and researchers.
If we think, for example, that intelligence is innate and that talents are given, we are likely to focus our interventions at helping kids unfold their potentialsâ at the cost of not always giving a chance to those whom we think of as âuntalentedâ. If we believe, on the other hand, that knowledge or intelligence are a mere reflection of a childâs surrounds, then we are likely to âpass onâ our own solutions, rules, and values, to our youngsters. And we may do so at the cost of trivializing their ways of doing, thinking, and relating to the world. And if we believe, as Piaget and Papert do, that knowledge is actively constructed by the child in interaction with her world, then we are tempted to offer opportunities for kids to engage in
hands-on explorations that fuel the constructive process. We may do so at the cost of letting them ârediscover the wheelâ or drift away when shortcuts could be welcome.
Let me also say, on the outset, that there is nothing wrong in showing kids the right ways of doing things, in helping them unfold their natural gifts, or in letting them discover things by themselves. Yet, both inneism and behaviorism (the believe in either âfixityâ or extreme malleability of mind] can become a formula for disaster when worldviews are at odds, value systems clash, or when some âunpopular viewsâ stubbornly persist within a community. Thatâs when we need to ask ourselves, in all simplicity, âwho are we to tell the children of others what they should learn, and how? Who are we to know whatâs better for others, whatâs to be bettered? Such questions become particularly relevant in cultures that are not homogeneous â in multi-cultural groups where different value systems have to learn to co-exist.
My own life-long interest in constructivism and socio-constructivism grows out of a personal belief that wherever âdiversityâ reigns, centralized planning, or mere transmission of traditional values wonât work. Instead, auto-determination and negociation â i.e. self-expression and exchangesâare needed.
Psychologists and pedagogues like Piaget, Papert but also dewey, Freynet, Freire and others from the open school movement can give us insights into: 1. How to rethink education, 2-imagine new environments, and 3- put new tools, media, and technologies at the service of the growing child. They remind us that learning, especially today, is much less about acquiring information or submitting to other peopleâs ideas or values, than it is about putting oneâs own words to the world, or finding oneâs own voice, and exchanging our ideas with others.
I present some aspects of Piagetâs constructivist theory, and contrast them with Papertâs constructionism. I flesh out what each contributes and tend to leave out. I hope to provide some conceptual hooks for researchers, designers, and educators, to build on.
While capturing what is common in children's thinking at different developmental stagesâand describing how this commonality evolves over timeâ Piagetâs theory tends to overlook the role of context, uses, and media, as well as the importance of individual preferences or styles, in human learning and development. Thatâs where Papertâs âconstructionismâ comes in handy!
Seymour Papert (19 --)
Seymour Papert of Massachusetts Imnstitute of Technologies developed a theory of learning based upon Piagetâs constructivism. Note that Papert worked with Piaget in Geneva in the late 1950âies and early 1960âies. In his own words: âConstructionismâthe N word as opposed to the V wordâ shares contructivismâs view of learning as âbuilding knowledge structuresâthrough progressive internalization of actions⌠It then adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether itâs a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe ( Papert, 1991, p.1)
Because of its greater focus on learning through making rather than overall cognitive potentials, Papertâs approach helps us understand how ideas get formed and transformed when expressed through different media, when actualized in particular contexts, when worked out by individual minds. The emphasis shifts from universals to individual learnersâ conversation with their own favorite representations, artifacts, or objects-to-think with.
To Papert, projecting out our inner feelings and ideas is a key to learning. Expressing ideas makes them tangible and shareable which, in turn, informs, i.e., shapes and sharpens these ideas, and helps us communicate with others through our expressions. The cycle of self-directed learning is an iterative process by which learners invent for themselves the tools and mediations that best support the exploration of what they most care about. Learners, young and old, are âword- makers,â in Nelson Goodmanâs sense.
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Stressing the importance of externalizations as a means to augment the unaided mind is not new. Vygotsky has spent his entire life studying the role of cultural artifactsâtools, language, peopleâas a resource for drawing the best out of every personâs cognitive potential. So have many other researchers in the socio- constructivist tradition. The difference, as I see it, lays in 3 things: 1. In the role such external aids are meant to play at higher levels of a personâs development, 2. In the types of external aids, or media, studied (Papert focuses on digital media and computer-based technologies) and more important, 3. In the type of initiative the learner takes in the design of her own âobjects to think withâ.
To Papert, knowledge, even in adult experts, remains essentially grounded in contexts, and shaped by uses, and the use of external supports and mediation remains, in his mind, essential to expand the potentials of the human mindâat any level of their development. Papertâs constructionism, in other words, is both more situated more pragmatic than Piagetâs constructivism [or Vygotskyâs socio- constructivism]. This is so even if Papert himself doesnât make explicit use of the terms when describing his enterprise.
Situated Learning
In the last decade, an increasing number of researchers have come to the view that knowledge is essentially âsituatedâ and thus should not be detached from the situations in which it is constructed and actualized (e.g. Brown J.B & Collins, (1989), Rogoff & Lave, (1984), Bliss, Saljio & Light (Eds), 1999). This growing interest in the idea of situated knowledge, or knowledge as it lives and grows in context, has lead many researchers to look closely at individual peopleâs ways of knowing, or relating. Consistent with this approach, other researchers have shifted their focus from the study of general stages of human cognitive development to the study of individual or culturally related learning styles, and/or context- dependant developmental paths (Carey, 1987; Gilligan, 1987; Fox Keller, 1985; Turkle, 1984).
Situated approaches to human learning and development are multiple and varied. The one thing they share is that all question the prevalent view among
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very successfully. It this is true, they should prefer the more concrete forms of knowledge favored by constructionism to the propositional forms of knowledge [favored by traditional epistemology]â (Papert 1991, p.10) In reclaiming the deeply grounded, experience-based, and subjective nature of human cognition, Papertâs approach reminds us that alternative epitemologies are indeed possible, and that concrete thinking is no less important than figuring out things âin the headâ.
To conclusion: Piaget & Papert: Similar Goals, Different Means
Piaget and Papert are both constructivists in that they view children as the builders of their own cognitive tools, as well as of their external realities. For them, knowledge and the world are both constructed and constantly reconstructed through personal experience. Each gains existence and form through the construction of the other. Knowledge is not merely a commodity to be transmitted, encoded, retained, and re-applied, but a personal experience to be constructed. Similarily, the world is not just sitting out there waiting to be to be uncovered, but gets progressively shaped and transformed through the child's, or the scientist's, personal experience.
Piaget and Papert are also both developmentalists in that they share an incremental view of knowledge construction. The common objective is to highlight the processes by which people outgrow their current views of the world, and construct deeper understandings about themselves and their environment. In their empirical investigations, Piaget and Papert both study the conditions under which learners are likely to maintain or change their theories of a given phenomenon through interacting with it during a significant period of time.
Despite these important convergences, the approaches of the two thinkers nonetheless differ. Understanding these differences requires a clarification of what each thinker means by intelligence, and of how he chooses to study it.
In appearance, both Piaget and Papert define intelligence as adaptation, or the ability to maintain a balance between stability and change, closure and
openess, continuity and diversity, or, in Piaget's words, between assimilation and accommodation. And both see psychological theories as attempts to model how people handle such difficult balances. At a deeper level, however, the difference is that Piaget's interest was mainly in the construction of internal stability ( la conservation et la reorganisation des acquis ), whereas Papert is more interested in the dynamics of change ( la decouverte de nouveaute ). Allow me to elaborate:
Piaget's theory relates how children become progressively detached from the world of concrete objects and local contingencies, gradually becoming able to mentally manipulate symbolic objects within a realm of hypothetical worlds. He studied children's increasing ability to extract rules from empirical regularities and to build cognitive invariants. He emphasized the importance of such cognitive invariants as means of interpreting and organizing the world. One could say that Piaget's interest was in the assimilation pole. His theory emphasizes all those things needed to maintain the internal structure and organization of the cognitive system. And what Piaget describes particularly well is precisely this internal structure and organization of knowledge at different levels of development.
Papert's emphasis lies almost at the opposite pole. His contribution is to remind us that intelligence should be defined and studied in-situ ; alas, that being intelligent means being situated, connected, and sensitive to variations in the environment. In contrast to Piaget, Papert draws our attention to the fact that âdiving intoâ situations rather than looking at them from a distance, that connectedness rather than separation, are powerful means of gaining understanding. Becoming one with the phenomenon under study is, in his view, a key to learning. Itâs main function is to put empathy at the service of intelligence. To conclude, Papert's research focuses on how knowledge is formed and transformed within specific contexts, shaped and expressed through different media, and processed in different people's minds. While Piaget liked to describe the genesis of internal mental stability in terms of successive plateaus of equilibrium, Papert is interested in the dynamics of change. He stresses the fragility of thought during transitional periods. He is concerned with how different people think once their convictions break down, once alternative views sink in, once adjusting, stretching, and expanding their current view of the world becomes necessary. Papert always points toward this fragility, contextuality, and flexibility of knowledge under construction.
any situation, it would seem, there are moments when we need to project part of our experience outwards, to detach from it, to encapsulate it, and then reengage with it. This view of separateness can be seen as a provisory means of gaining closer relatedness and understanding. It does not preclude the value of being embedded in one's own experience.
On the other hand, Papert's view that diving into unknown situations, at the cost of experiencing a momentary sense of loss, is also a crucial part of learning. Only when a learner has actually traveled through a world, by adopting different perspectives, or putting on different âglasses,â can a dialogue begin between local and initially incompatible experiences.
To conclude, both âdwelling inâ and âstepping backâ are equally important in getting such a cognitive dance going. How could people learn from their experience as long as they are totally immersed in it. There comes a time when one needs to translate the experience into a description or a model. Once built, the model gains a life of its own, and can be addressed as if it were ânot me.â From then on, a new cycle can begin, because as soon as the dialog gets started (between me and my artifact), the stage is set for new and deeper connectedness and understanding.
In his book, The Evolving Self , Kegan elaborates on the notion that becoming embedded and emerging from embeddedness are both needed to achieve deeper undertandings of oneself and others. To Kegan, human development is a lifelong attempt on the part of the subject to resolve the tension between getting embedded and emerging from embeddedness (Kegan, 1982). In a similar way, I think of cognitive growth as a lifelong attempt on the part of the subject to form and constantly reform some kind of balance between closeness and separation, openness and closure, mobility and stability, change and invariance.
References
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated knowledge and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher. Vol. 18 (1). pp. 32-42. Carey, S. (1983) Cognitive Development: The Descriptive Problem. In Gazzaniga (Ed.). Handbook for Cognitive Neurology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence & Erlbaum. Carey, S. (1987). Conceptual Change in Childhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fox-Keller, E. (1985). Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven. Yale University Press. Kegan, R. (1982). The Evolving Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic books. Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1967). The Child's Conception of Space. See especially âSystems of Reference and Horizontal-Vertical Coordinates.â p. 375-418. New York: W. W. Norton &Co. Rogoff, B., Lave, J. (Ed.) (1984). Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster. Witkin, H. & Goodenough, D. (1981). Cognitive Styles: Essence and Origins. International University Press.
