Abstract
Constructionism is a hybrid theory—creed—set of principles for task design, which many scholars working with digital tools in mathematics education have appropriated. It is historically associated with the programming language Logo. This chapter presents a brief history of constructionism; positions Logo in the history of computer developments; and outlines ideas in two influential constructionist books, Papert’s 1980 book Mindstorms and Noss & Hoyles’ 1996 book Windows on mathematical meanings. The final section attempts to distill the/a constructionist view(s) of tools in learning mathematics.
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Notes
- 1.
I hesitated about inserting the word ‘mathematics’ after ‘learning’ because there is a sense (which I hope will become apparent in the course of this chapter) in which constructionism is more than just about learning mathematics.
- 2.
Lisp code would actually be (SET LEFTBANK ‘(M W C G B)) but I will not present code in my description.
- 3.
This view of school mathematics as ‘institutionalised mathematics ’ has links with Chevallard’s anthropological theory of didactics which is considered in Chap. 10.
- 4.
See Healy and Kynigos (2010) for a more recent history of the concept.
- 5.
The wolf, the cabbage and the goat problem (see Sect. 8.2) is an example of this kind of microworld.
- 6.
Curiously, in the BASIC vs. Logo debate presented earlier in this chapter, both MacKernan and Noss argue within the ‘expressing mathematics’ pole, suggesting, of course, that the debate on how to use digital tools in mathematics education is not unidimensional.
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Monaghan, J. (2016). Constructionism. In: Tools and Mathematics. Mathematics Education Library, vol 110. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02396-0_8
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