Some contemporary or relatively recent articles, studied together, seem to suggest that computer science education is in a state of crisis. But, is it? This article examines the arguments. My preliminary findings is that if you examine the arguments from a positivist stance, you may well infer that there is a crisis, but if you view them from a constructivist perspective, the crisis becomes an ...

Wikis are promoted as collaborative writing tools that allow students to transform a text into a collective document by information sharing and group reflection. However, despite the promising collaborative capabilities of wikis, their pedagogical value regarding collaborative writing is still questionable. Wiki alone cannot make collaborative writing happen, and students do not automatically b...

As stated in the introduction, we believe social constructivism can provide crucial direction for preservice education and we see evidence of it in the strong, innovative programs described in this book. But what exactly is meant by this term? As Richardson (1997) notes, constructivist teaching is not “a monolithic, agreed-upon concept” (p. 3). It is often barely understood, or actually misunde...

This paper starts with a survey of different notions of learning, and finds that the “logic” of discovery has been neglected. The paradox of “exploitation” and “ exploration”, derived from the organization literature, is proposed as the core issue. We need to recognize the importance of organization and co-ordination, in learning and innovation. This implies, among other things, that transactio...

This article presents a discourse analysis method designed to study networked cognitive communication processes in knowledge communities, such as conceptual change, higher order learning and knowledge building. The method is grounded on genetic epistemology and integrates constructivist and socioconstructivist theoretical concepts. The sentence (understood as judgment) is chosen as the unit of ...

The production of scientific knowledge is a social process that can be analysed with the help of conceptual tools drawn from economic science. A growing literature shows that this analysis is fruitful for the understanding of relevant cognitive aspects of the process of science and its outcomes, and can offer a middle ground between rationalist and constructivist paradigms. Three apoproaches ar...