Papert's Legacy on Digital Inclusion: a Research on K-8 Education
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Scuola di Studi Umanistici e della Formazione Corso di Laurea in Scienze della Formazione Primaria Papert’s Legacy on Digital Inclusion: a Research on K-8 Education Relatore Andreas Robert Formiconi Candidato Claudia Baiata Anno Accademico 2019/2020 To my awesome Family. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 6 Chapter I: Life and legacy of Seymour Papert 9 1.1.1 Historic overview 9 1.1.2 Seymour Papert’s life, the upbringing 11 1.1.3 The University years 12 1.1.4 The work with Piaget 13 1.1.5 A peculiar encounter 15 1.1.6 Lego LOGO robotics 17 1.1.7 Social projects 18 1.1.8 The accident 20 1.1.9 Achievements and awards 21 1.1.10 Papert’s legacy 22 1.2.1 Les bricoleurs 23 1.2.2 The positiveness of errors 24 1.2.3 Microworlds 26 1.2.4 Mathland versus Mathophobia 28 1.3.1 LOGO coding language and the Turtle geometry 29 1.3.2 The evolution of Logo 34 1.3.3 Lego Mindstorms 36 1.3.4 Computer Clubhouse 36 1.3.5 Maker Movement pedagogy 39 1.3.6 Scratch 41 1.3.7 Snap! 43 3 1.3.8 MaMaMedia 43 Chapter II: Theoretical overview 45 2.1.1 Constructivism and Social Constructivism 45 2.1.2 Learning by doing 47 2.1.3 Constructionism Theory 48 2.1.4 Papert’s reflections on Piaget 51 2.1.5 Metacognition 53 2.1.6 Computational thinking: thinking like a scientist to solve problems 55 2.2.1 What is coding 58 2.2.2 Fancy paraphernalia: useful tools or useless fashion? 60 2.2.3 The misconception of the digital natives 62 2.2.4 Digital divide versus digital inclusion. How to bridge the gap? 65 Chapter III: European and national legislation 69 3.1.1 2015 Joint Report of the Council and the Commission 69 3.1.2 New Skills Agenda for Europe, European Commission, 2016 69 3.1.3 The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens 2017 70 3.1.4 Digital Education Action Plan 2018 70 3.1.5 Council recommendation of 22nd May 2018 on key competences for 72 lifelong learning 3.2.1 How are the EU recommendations being adopted and realized in Italy? 73 3.2.2 Actions taken between 2007-2018 74 3.2.3 Program the future 75 3.2.4 Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale 77 4 3.2.5 Indicazioni Nazionali e nuovi scenari 79 Chapter IV: Digital inclusion, a research on K-8 education 81 4.1.1 Comprehensive Institutes 81 4.1.2 The research 85 4.1.3 List of Prato Comprehensive Institutes 89 4.1.4 Analysis 107 4.1.5 Improvement plan (PDM) outcomes 112 4.2.1 A case study: I.C. Cironi 114 4.2.2 The survey 115 4.2.3 The interview 119 Conclusions 126 Afterword 131 Annex 133 Bibliography 144 Website list 150 5 INTRODUCTION Definition of digital inclusion: strategies and actions to ensure more equal access to digital technologies and Web facilities and to strengthen effective, meaningful and beneficial use for all members of the public in their day-to-day lives1. The present work builds on a personal interest: as a teacher, I have always been keen on learning ICT more extensively, in order to experiment innovative teaching methodologies with my classes. The first opportunity to be involved in specific training on education technology came when I enrolled in a seminar on the Logo Programming Language at the Scuola-Città Pestalozzi in Florence. On this occasion, I met Andreas Formiconi, the professor leading the workshop. He would later become my teacher of didactic technologies laboratory and eventually my thesis advisor and mentor. The seminar, addressed to the teaching staff of the school and open to Primary Education Science students, aimed to offer an overview regarding coding in K-8 education. The class was based on a hands-on approach, in such a manner that everyone was set to work from the very beginning, in front of a computer. This represented my first experience with “the Turtle” and the Logo programming language. The interest and the involvement on this subject increased, to the point that I started collaborating with prof. Formiconi to the English translation of his essay "Piccolo manuale di Librelogo", aimed to guide to the use of Papert’s Logo through an open source programming environment, called Librelogo. The more I was learning during the translation, the more I wanted to further deepen my knowledge on Papert’s thought and works, but I soon realized that such an important figure didn’t actually have a proper place in any of my pedagogy texts. It was evident there wasn’t a complete and exhaustive biography. Although he had been the father of coding for children and author of the Constructionism theory, at best his name was just briefly 1 Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Volume 1, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, Mehdi Khosrowpour, publisher: Information Science Reference, 2008. 6 mentioned; it seemed that an inexplicable veil of oblivion descended on his work. And yet, Papert has still plenty to teach to the next generations: not only in terms of powerful ideas, but also for his outstanding humanity. I therefore decided to devote myself to finding data regarding the scholar, in order to create a comprehensive memoir, in an attempt of making a reconstruction of his outstanding and remarkable life. Subsequently, I collected a lot of material that I later used in this present thesis. My sources were interviews, newspaper articles, videos; I also gathered some informal anecdotes told by his collaborators and friends, published in Gary Stager’s site2. Reading about Papert's works and researching online information about his life and accomplishments, led me to a better understanding of the man behind the scientist. The very essence of his life unfolds in his extraordinary humanity and philanthropy. Since childhood, he found himself witnessing unrighteousness and racial inequities, such as apartheid. Alone against the system, he found ways to oppose to this unjust exclusion by organizing classes to teach reading and writing to black people of his neighbourhood. Throughout his life, he set an example for inclusiveness, dedicating himself to others through social and humanitarian projects. He foresaw, a lot ahead of time, that computers could create a space for social equity and would eventually enter into everybody’s homes. His generous and altruistic personality inspired various movements from below, reaching out to the poorest strata of society, such as marginalized youth in America, where he resided for most of his life, but also in different parts of the world. Even today, his name is linked to the ideal of inclusiveness. This dissertation is structured into four chapters. The first one begins with a thorough biography of the life and works of Seymour Papert. The legacy he left to the next generations, his pedagogic theories and the movements born out of his ideas still live on today. The second one analyzes the theoretical paradigms that inspired Papertian constructionism: constructivism and socio-constructivism. It also takes into 2 http://dailypapert.com/about/ 7 consideration a reflection regarding the misconception of digital natives and defines what digital divide is and how to overcome it. Chapter three consists in an overview of the recent Italian and European legislation regarding technological skills, together with actions and programmes to contrast the digital divide. The final part examines the three-year plan of the educational offer of all the Comprehensive Institutes in the province of Prato, to verify their adherence to European and Italian laws in relation to digital education. Investigating a local reality helped verifying the real implementations on digital skills and inclusiveness. The work also takes into account a specific institute, as a case study, to understand in detail the challenges that a school faces in terms of inclusion. 8 CHAPTER I Life and legacy of Seymour Papert 1.1.1 Historic overview In order to understand the roots of computational thinking for children it is necessary to take a step back in time and get acquainted with the mind behind it: the mathematician, pioneer of Artificial Intelligence, computer scientist and visionary educator Seymour Papert. This outstanding man lived in the time of the computer revolution, where the sudden, massive penetration of technology took place rapidly. In the Fifties, the competition for the space race with the Soviet Union had determined a superiority of the rival Country that in 1957 launched on space the first Russian man on the first manmade satellite, the Sputnik. In order to determine where the school system in the United States had failed and in a desperate attempt to regain technological ground over the Cold War enemy, in 1959 the Woods Hole Conference was held; it hosted the most brilliant minds of the time in terms of education, science and psychology, and was chaired by Jerome Bruner, theorist of the spiral curriculum. As a consequence of the conference works, a strong emphasis was given to science and maths, and the curriculum movement was implanted in the school. The need of a rational and scientific approach led to the definition of criteria of the curriculum reform, such as operationalizing the objectives, evaluating pre-knowledges, splitting the objectives into small sub-objectives, using the feedback during the process (Calvani, 1998). Still, a little less than ten years later, the 1968 social conflict and student rebellion underlined the discontent towards an unfair system that privileged a small élite to the expenses of the majority. Some people had begun withdrawing children from school and homeschooling was the result of their disillusion and distrust, with a distressing feeling that the educative system was yielding its institutional role.