My rub against Papert: A new 'great-divide' to traverse
I really love Papert’s work with kids and computation, but I nailed down my rub against his scholarship in general: He doesn’t let the data speak. What I mean by this is how he never fully discusses what his methods and procedures were to account for and generate the general claims he makes about kids, computing, and cognition. He never discusses any threats to internal/external validity and how such threats influence and cut into his contrastive case about the cognitive effects of schooling vs. his educational program.
In Mindstorms (1980), he provides snippets of what he experienced with his educational programs with kids and computation, then uses these small instances to support and make generalizable claims about kids learning to learn: the child as the lone epistemologist (see one such instance: a hypothetical case on p. 76-93).
Papert best provides a glimpse into the minds of a few of the children in the “mind-sized bites” chapter (particularly p. 100-115). Here, he cherry picks some cases about Keith, Robert, Michael, and Paul. We see some models that they built, and a few actual examples of the kids talking about their models; notably, Robert’s insight into the writing of his model in “mind-sized bites,” which is another way of saying that his code is modular and each part can be explained as doing one task. Yet, Papert mentions almost as an aside that these kids have been learning with educators who have been helping the kids learn about subprocedures (p. 103-104). Additionally, this small portion of the text briefly mentions how some kids were very resistant to this idea of breaking up the procedure.
Prior to this section and through its end, Papert desires to position the relationship between the computer and the child as a this mindstorm, but where are the educators in this mix? They are there, but only mentioned in passing (see p. 134 for the most explicit, but still hypothetical gesture). When I re-read Mindstorms, I can see this pattern emerge about how educators are pushed into the background, and this computer-kid-computation relation is foregrounded to make his case.
Let me stop and clarify what point I’m trying to make here. I respect and have modelled and implemented a similar computational-educational program with kids (Sugar Labs @ NDSU), but Papert’s book and work seem to re-constitute a problematic tendency for literacies to be positioned as autodidactic and integral to general cognitive development. Even though Papert’s work with children is far from being autodidactic in practice, i.e., a personal, self-directed activity of learning, he certainly positions his insights and conclusions about computational-based learning as such. Additionally, he positions the autodidact as being able to generate computational systems and procedures in tandem with the cognitive structures needed to carry out this work. In short, he provides little evidence to support his claims about such generalizable cognitive development, as well as how these children process and learn these computational practices as a situated practice amongst peers and other educators.
My critique is informed by a host of situated literacies scholarship that pushes back against such literacy narratives of the autodidact (Howard 1991; Fishman 1991; Farr & Guerra 1995; Street 1993; Barton 1991); especially, Scribner and Cole’s landmark research (1981) against great leap theories of literacy (Ong, Havelock, Goody & Watt) which was interestingly conducted and published around the same time as Papert’s book.
Fast forward to now, where programming is being framed as a new mass literacy in both the public (CODE.org) and academic spheres, there has yet to be any empirically-driven research that supports Papert’s claims. Vee (2010, 2013, and see her latest blog on Code.org's #hourofcode) has provided a good start to critique discourses surrounding these cultural pushes surrounding kids, computation, and cognition, by positioning it historically. Peppler & Warschaeur (2012) conducted an ethnographic study of kids working with Scratch; a computational programming language and environment that has deep historical connections with Papert’s Logo. P&W focused on one particular child from their study, and unfortunately made some wholesale conclusions about the cognitive and linguistic gains made possible by this particular child’s work with Scratch. Namely, they admit that their study cannot account for all of the other educational interactions this child had to further develop her language skills throughout the observation period.
I, too, have conducted similar work in my Master’s thesis and an upcoming chapter about my work with the aforementioned Sugar Labs, but I have recently desired to step back from such claims for my dissertation research. How is computer programming a situated social and literate practice? What are the multiple manifestations of it? How is it understood by the people who practice it? And what is its relationship with reading and writing?
In the end, I’m taking a tip from Scribner and Cole, Barton, and Street to first and foremost empirically study these situated practices across multiple domains to provide thick descriptions and substantive theories to test further. When more research of this nature is being conducted, then scholars can point to evidence that will help generate more informed ways to talk about this newest push for a mass literacy of programming.