Constructionism in upper secondary and tertiary levels

In the constructionist paradigm, the fundamental premise is to create student-centred learning situations for students to consciously engage in constructing shareable, tangible objects, through meaningful projects. In Papert’s vision, one particularly valuable means of doing that is in programming the computer because, in doing that, the student “establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building” (Papert, 1980, p. 5). Since the 1980s, there have been countless experiences and studies exploring and documenting the use of the constructionist paradigm, many of the first ones using Logo computer programming, but mostly with young students at primary or middle-school levels. However, experiences in upper secondary and university levels are scarcer. Laurillard (2002), nonetheless, advocates for constructionist and collaborative technology-based learning environments in higher education; she says (p. 42): “the aim of university teaching is to make student learning possible […] not simply impart decontextualised knowledge, but must emulate the success of everyday learning by situating knowledge in real-world activity” helping students reflect on their experience of the world and ways of representing it. The purpose of this working group was to share constructionist experiences in upper secondary and tertiary educational levels, particularly those involving computer programming and/or computational thinking and environments; and to reflect on the challenges, needs and differences of constructionist technology-based implementations in the various educational levels, and on how to promote such implementations in upper levels. The guiding questions for the working group were: 1. What are the characteristics of constructionist implementations in upper educational levels? In upper secondary school? At university level? How are they different from lower levels? What are the particular challenges? 2. How is, or what could be, the role of digital technologies and computer programming in such implementations? 3. How can constructionist implementations be integrated and promoted in higher education? What is required for that? 4. Can real-life data, phenomena and problems be harnessed for developing such implementations