1. cognitive sciences and
technologies:
the “nouvelle vague”
and its effects on
education
elena pasquinelli

2. contents
• 1. give a panoramic view of the “new wave
of studies” in cognitive sciences and
technologies
• cognition is decentralized
• 2. discuss related educational models
• constructivism
• 3. analyze the relationship between 1. et 2.

3. 1. Nouvelle vague in cognitive sciences
different
approaches that can
be described as the
“nouvelle vague” in
cognitive sciences ...
... only family
resemblances

4. • the mind-computer metaphor “Boiled down
to its essence, cognitive science proclaims
that in one way or another our minds are
computers” [Dennett, 1993, p. 126]
• critical attitude towards the “classic cognitive
sciences” (...another gerrymandered group of approaches to
cognition)
• cognitive processes are not (necessarily) centralized
• criticism towards the massive recourse to internal
representations: cognition is not (limited) to being the
mirror of reality
• cognitive processes are not necessarily formal, logical
operations

5. decentralization
• a flock of birds sweeps across
• they follow the leader
the sky. Like a well-
choreographed dance
troupe, the birds veer to the
• there is no leader bird,
there is self-organization:
left in unison. Then, suddenly,
they all dart to the right and
swoop down toward the
• no bird has a sense of
the overall flock pattern
ground. Each movement
seems perfectly
coordinated. ... How do birds
• each bird follows a set
of rules and reacts to
keep their movement so the movements of the
orderly, so coordinate?
(Mitchell Resnick, 1997) birds nearby

6. Mitchell Resnick,
1997
• LEGO Papert
Professor of Learning
• StarLogo creatures (Resnick,
Research Academic 1997): language for creating and
Head, Program in
Media Arts and exploring decentralized systems
Sciences Co-Director,
Center for Future
Civic Media • the idea of decentralization is
• Lifelong kindergarten
largely diffused (era of
http://
llk.media.mit.edu/
decentralization):
• LEGO MindStorms
robotics construction kit • decentralized models in biology,
ethnology, market economy,
• Scratch
epistemology, mind, computers
• Crickets
• Computer Clubhouse • technologies are a vehicle of
project
decentralization
• Author of Turtles,
Termites, and Traffic
Jams, 1997, MIT Press

7. embodiment
and situation
Rodney Brooks, • Parallel, reactive robots
1991
subsumption • Multiple layers of direct
perceptuo-motor loops
architecture >
intelligence • Memory and internal
representations are
without externalized in the
representations environment
>
cambrian • The world is its own best
representation
intelligence

8. distribution
Edwin • cognitive structures are not
Hutchins, inside the individual
1995; • cognition includes external
David Kirsh, states such as language and
1994 different technological devices
epistemic • the notion of representation is
actions extended to the complex of the
individual + its environment and
actions

9. emergency and complexity
Esther Thelen, 1997
dynamic systems • new skills emerge from
approach, • local interactions between
no specific
commitment with an • maturation
approach to • and different bodily and
perception, external conditions
nonetheless stress • each condition is weighted
on perception, differently in time and its
action, embodiment evolution is monitored by the
model

10. externalism
Andy Clark, • external reality drives cognitive
1995 processes and behaviors of the
individual and of groups of
individuals

11. enaction and self-organization
Varela, 1991;
• cognition is the result of the
coupling between environment and
Thompson, 2002 organism
enactive
cognitive
• at the evolutive level
sciences: theory • at the level of the ongoing
interaction
of epistemology,
organisms, • crucial role of perception and
evolution action
• for any kind of skill
• each condition is weighted
differently in time and its
evolution is monitored by the
model

12. 2. Nouvelle vague and education
how do these
approaches affect
theories of learning
and knowlege
acquisition through
education?

13. epistemological
pluralism
• another expression of decentralization, embodiment, situation
and distribution of knowledge is the challenge to the egemony
of logical, abstract, formal reasoning >
• validity of multiple ways of thinking and knowing >
• rehabilitation of concrete, informal, sensori-motor forms
of knowledge acquisition in face of abstract, formal, logical
cognition and knowledge acquisition

14. concrete knowledge
• contextual and social
construction of
knowledge, role of social
factors vs role of
reasoning and
experimentation • “formal reasoning is not a stage
but a style” (Turkle & Papert,
• feminist approaches to 1992)
epitemology
• sociology of scientific
knowledge

15. Piaget: genetic epistemology
• explain the acquisition of (scientific) knowledge through its
genetic development (stages): successive development of
cognitive capacities, from concrete to abstract
• sensorimotor stage of cognitive development: 0-2 > perceptual
concepts that cannot be manipulated; preoperational: 2-7 >
language and symbolic play, but still hands-on and learning by
doing
• concrete operational, formal operational: 7-11 > logical
concepts (reversible), from the concrete (personal experience)
to the abstract
• scholar curricula reflect this view

16. Bruner: enactive knowledge
• Stages are forms of knowledge and learning; learning is re-
organization
• 3 forms of knowledge/representation:
• symbolic: language-based representations (manipulation of
symbols)
• iconic: image-related representations (mental images tht
cannot be manipulated)
• enactive: learning by doing, action-related representations (the
action is the representation: i.e. driving)
• enactive knowledge is lifelong (as Resnick’s lifelong kindergarten)

17. Bruner: educational
principles
• instruction should be based on knowledge about cognition
• knowledge = re-arranging
• learning is an active process through which learners build
their knowledge based on past knowledge experiences
and readiness (will and capacity to know): spiral curricula
• knowledge = co-presence of stages
• education should propose the three forms of
representation in sequence for each new task/material;
any material can be taught at any moment of the life of
the child

18. Bruner: constructivism
• constructivism =
discovery, through
manipulation and • "The concept of prime numbers appears to be
perception but also more readily grasped when the child, through
construction, discovers that certain handfuls of
through more beans cannot be laid out in completed rows and
abstract columns. Such quantities have either to be laid
out in a single file or in an incomplete row-
transformations of column design in which there is always one extra
information, or one too few to fill the pattern. These
patterns, the child learns, happen to be called
construction of prime. It is easy for the child to go from this step
hypotheses to the recognition that a multiple table so
called, is a record sheet of quantities in
• manipulation both completed mutiple rows and columns. Here is
factoring, multiplication and primes in a
in the physical and construction that can be visualized."
in the metaphorical
sense

19. Papert: constructionism
• Seymour Papert (1991) : proposes a form of
education in which learning passes through design
(rather than through observation or instructions)
• importance of tangibility, personal access and
construction (also in the metaphorical sense)
•

20. constructionism &
technology
• computers make the kindergarten become lifelong
• “computers provide a context for the development of
concrete thinking” (Turkle & Papert, 1992)
• because of the possibility of perceiving abstract things:
computers are at the interface between abstract things
and physical things
• because of the possibility of designing and
personalizing

21. • Logo turtles for teaching mathematics
• turtles are robots connected to a computer; the child drives
the turtle by using directional and distance commands
• “the turtle makes possible a new approach to thinking about
geometry, contrasting sharply with the Euclidean methods
traditionally taught in the classroom. ... The turtle connects to
the children’s experience in the world - children can ‘play
turtle’, imagining themselves as the turtle
• Logo turtles can be purely virtual: manipulations and
transformations of computer, digital repesentations

22. 3. The two aspects of construction: physical and
metaphorical
which is the
relationship between
decentralization (of
mind processes) and
constructivism (as a
model for education
and learning) ?

23. two aspects of
constructivism
• constructivism/concrete knowledge =
hands-on as a physical process of tangible manipulation
• constructivism/concrete knowledge =
hands-on as a metaphorical process
of transformation, discovery and design =
hands-on head-on

24. hands-on
• one can have hands on and
• hands-on: follow a set of instructions
• interfaces based on action • constructivism is design:
and perception: virtual creating things
objects are manipulated
• “create tools that engage
• representations of learners in construction,
invention, experimentation.
concrete objects
This process involves at least
• representations of two levels of design:
abstract objects educators need to design
things that allow students to
• haptic sensors and
design things” (Resnick,
actuators: haptic
perceptuo-motor loop 1997)

25. • epistemological pluralism
rehabilitates concrete
constructivism
knowledge as enactive/
sensorimotor/embodied
&
knowledge
decentralization
• at least it makes it a
form of knowledge
which is as adult and
1
worth of respect than
logical, formal, abstract constructivism as
knowledge metaphorical hands-on has
no other relation with
• but it does not say decentralization than the
anything about indirect, metaphorical
metaphorical (non- analogy with physical hands-
tangible) hands-on on

26. • Concrete knowledge and
decentralization are not
necessarily alternatives to
constructivism
internal representations and
computational models: they
&
can be integrated
• Kirsh, 1991: defends the role
decentralization
of perception in epistemic
actions but reproaches 2
Brooks’ representational constructivism as physical
eliminativism for hands-on in not implied as a
misunderstanding the role of necessity, but admitted;
concepts in many human the relationship with
adaptive behaviors, thus for abstract, formal, logical
bounding the explanation of knowledge and with other
human cognition to a reduced forms of instruction than
number of animal behaviors hands-on is still an open
question