McCulloch W. S., Papert S. A., Blum M., Da Fonseca J. L. S. & Moreno-Diaz R. (1969) The fun of failures (after dinner address). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 156: 963–968. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/2831
Proceedings of the Conference on Rein Control, or Unidirectional Rate Sensitivity, a Fundamental Dynamic and Organizing Function in Biology, 13–14 April 1967, edited by Manfred Clynes
Papert S. (1993) Instructionism versus constructivism. Chapter 7 in: The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. Basic Books, New York: 137–156. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/6020
Turkle S. & Papert S. (1992) Epistemological pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete. Journal of Mathematical Behavior 11(1): 3–33. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/6081
The concerns that fuel the discussion of women and computers are best served by talking about more than women and more than computers. Women’s access to science and engineering has historically been blocked by prejudice and discrimination. Here we address sources of exclusion determined not by rules that keep women out, but by ways of thinking that make them reluctant to join in. Our central thesis is that equal access to even the most basic elements of computation requires an epistemological pluralism, accepting the validity of multiple ways of knowing and thinking.
Wilensky U. & Papert S. (2010) Restructurations: Reformulating knowledge disciplines through new representational forms. In: Clayson J. & Kalas I. (eds.) Constructionist approaches to creative learning, thinking and education: Lessons for the 21st century. Proceedings of Constructionism 2010. Comenius University, Bratislava. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3766
The goals of instruction are usually taken to be fixed, at least in their broad outline. Forexample, in elementary school mathematics, students progress from counting to addition,multiplication, and fractions. Given this state of affairs, the business of educational researchhas been to determine how the fixed instructional aims can best be reached. Educationresearchers have traditionally asked questions such as: What are the typical difficulties thatstudents experience? Which means of instruction – method A or method B – is better forachieving our instructional aims? In contrast, we will describe a line of work in which we have shifted the focus from themeans to the object of learning. We are concerned with how the structure and properties ofknowledge affect its learnability and the power that it affords to individuals and groups. Webriefly review three agent-based restructurations of traditional science content and discuss the consequences for scientific power and learnability.