Research on MWC

Permeable media

This paper introduces a design strategy called permeable media for software used in Constructionist approaches to introductory computer science education. Permeable media is characterized by three qualities: it invites learners to extend themselves into the medium, it has affordances for learners to make the medium part of themselves, and it supports learners in growing beyond the medium when they are ready to do so. This paper joins a long tradition of design for Constructionist learning environments, emphasizing two principles which have not been emphasized in the prior literature: incorporating media into one’s identity and embodiment, and support for growing beyond the medium. This paper illustrates permeable media by analyzing the design of Banjo, a software package which allows beginners to create web applications. The final sections theorize the relationship between permeable media and computational literacies and propose a research agenda based on this paper’s conceptualization of permeable media.

Growing as a person

To understand how learners develop identities in computer science (CS), we must investigate learners’ experiences with computing throughout their lives. Drawing from a theory of learning as participation in communities of practice, we analyze interviews with high school students at the end of their time in a 2-year, constructionist CS course to better understand how these students’ CS education affected their experiences with computing in their everyday lives. We identify moments where students begin to “re-see” technology which offer insight into how students author their computational identities. However, our analysis reveals that re-seeing does not inevitably align with a positive trajectory of participation in CS. Instead, we discuss how the nuances of students’ “re-seeing” experiences combine with various social factors to influence students’ computational identity authorship.

Recovering Constructionism in computer science

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.