Posted by Seymour Aubrey Papert (29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and of the constructionist movement in education.
Seymour coined the term “Constructionism” in the mid-’80s in connection with the academic work on LOGO, (the children’s computer programming language) and to advance a new theory of learning, signifying that children learn best when they
- Use tech-empowered learning tools and computational environments,
- Take active roles of designers and builders; and
- Do it in a social setting, with helpful mentors and coaches, or over networks.
His theory stems from the work of education innovators such as John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Paulo Freire; but most of all, Jean Piaget, the genius genetic epistemologist with whom he worked from 1958 to 1963 in Switzerland.
Seymour wanted to help kids from all racial, social, and economic backgrounds improve their learning and thinking. He believed children’s cognitive development and scientific thinking grew through stages of self-constructed knowledge structures and that they need to actively work through exploratory activities that allow them to discover and construct their own world. His research and innovation spanned over 40 years tying together computer technology with ideas about the development of intelligence, knowledge, and learning to learn.
In the early ‘60s, Seymour came to MIT and co-founded with Marvin Minsky its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His Al team in 1967 created the first version of Logo, widely regarded as the first and most important effort to give children control over computers and over their learning and development. The key to computer programming in Logo was its playful way of enabling children (and adults) to think together about important ideas in geometry and mathematics by writing code that guided the movements of a virtual turtle (or several sprites) on the screen. This innovative research work continued through the ‘90s, as he served as MIT’s LEGO Professor of Learning Research. (Later, the name for the LEGO company’s award-winning toy Mindstorms, a robotic construction system for youngsters, was inspired by Seymour’s 1980 book of the same name.)
‘Playful learning’ has always been a key component of Seymour’s computer-based education programs with teachers and students alike. He considered “hard fun” – a term he embraced since hearing a young student apply it to a LOGO-based school project as the best and most effective learning strategy.
His work and ideas continue to stir radical rethinking about how to learn learning, how to coach for Constructionist teaching, and about the transformation of education through Constructionist uses of technology and programmable new media inside school systems, and through self-directed learning at home. There is so much to learn from the ways kids play, learn to create their own games, and figure out creative technology and gadgets on the fly.
Explore more about Seymour Papert’s work and ideas at:
- Professor Seymour Papert: Papert.org Home page. Including a list of works by Papert.
- Seymour Papert short biography at MIT
- A simplified online version of the programming language Logo.
- Papert’s Constructionism (learning theory)
- Situating Constructionism by Seymour Papert and Idit Harel, the first chapter from the book Constructionism (1991).
- Constructionism vs Instructionism – speech delivered by Papert to a conference of educators in Japan, in the 1980s
- Ackerman on Constructivism vs Constructionism – Edith Ackermann draws out the differences between Piaget’s Constructivism, Vygotsky’s Socio-Constructivism, and Papert’s Constructionism
- The Nature of Constructionist learning – MIT open-to-all online reading list on constructionism
- Lifelong Kindergarten Group – MIT Lifelong Kindergarten research group
- Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling – Northwestern University’s Constructionist learning and agent-based modeling research group
- NetLogo – A parallel Logo and premier agent-based modeling environment used in a large number of constructionist materials