Chapter 5: Computers and Education: A Cultural Constructivist Perspective

The general topic of the use of computers in education has not been systematically dealt with in the Review of Research in Education, although some specific aspects of it have been touched on (e.g., Sherrie Gott's chapter on apprenticeship and intelligent tutoring systems in Volume 15). Since the field is so vast, no review could do justice to it; thus, we must circumscribe the research we are reviewing to a manageable portion. Our major restriction is that we concentrate on Grades K-12 with an emphasis on late elementary school and early secondary school ages, including higher levels of the education system only in a few cases to illustrate a point. Within this still-vast field we select some research that has been widely disseminated, and therefore characterizes the field, and some research that, in our view, holds special promise for the future. Also, we come to this topic from a particular theoretical perspective, which acts as a further filter on the topics discussed. We call that perspective cultural constructivism. The basic idea of this approach can be grasped most readily by contrasting it with Piagetian constructivism. Piaget is justifiably famous for demonstrating the need to consider children to be constructors of their own development through their actions. By contrast, a cultural constructivist approach assumes not only an active child but an equally active and usually more powerful adult in interaction (we are speaking of educational settings). Moreover, cultural constructivism emphasizes that all human activity is mediated by cultural artifacts, which themselves have been constructed over the course of human history. The general framework of this approach is derived from the axioms of the cultural-historical school of psychology, which asserts that the unique character of human activity is that it is mediated through socially con-