BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: ISSUES OF STRUCTURE AND …

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: ISSUES OF STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN COMPUTATIONAL CREATION, IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL

Karen A. Brennan B.Sc. Computer Science and Mathematics (2003) B.Ed. Computer Science and Mathematics (2005) M.A. Curriculum Studies (2007) The University of British Columbia

Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. February 2013

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.

AUTHOR CERTIFIED BY ACCEPTED BY

Karen A. Brennan Program in Media Arts and Sciences

October 29, 2012

Mitchel Resnick LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research

Program in Media Arts and Sciences Thesis Supervisor

Patricia Maes Associate Academic Head Program in Media Arts and Sciences

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: ISSUES OF STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN COMPUTATIONAL CREATION, IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL

Karen A. Brennan

Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, on October 29, 2012, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences.

ABSTRACT

We live in a computational culture ? a culture in which we are surrounded by computational systems and interfaces, from social networks to banking infrastructure, to entertainment platforms, to transportation systems. This culture introduces new expectations and new opportunities for learning, creating new demands for what to learn and offering new possibilities for how to learn.

In this dissertation, I adopt a predominantly qualitative approach to exploring learning in computational culture, studying how the Scratch programming environment and online community are employed to support learning both in and out of school. To this end, I conducted interviews with 30 kids working with Scratch at home and 30 teachers working with Scratch in K-12 classrooms to develop descriptions of computational creation in these two settings.

Using a theoretical framework of agency and structure, I analyze how the at-home and school-classroom contexts enable ? or constrain ? young people's agency in computational creation. Despite common assumptions that at-home learning is necessarily lowstructure/high-agency and that at-school learning is necessarily high-structure/low-agency, I argue that structure and agency need not be in opposition. Designers of learning environments should explore intermediate possibilities, finding ways to employ structure in the service of learner agency.

THESIS SUPERVISOR

Mitchel Resnick LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research Program in Media Arts and Sciences

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: ISSUES OF STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN COMPUTATIONAL CREATION, IN AND OUT OF SCHOOL Karen A. Brennan

THESIS READER

Barry J. Fishman Associate Professor of Educational Studies and Learning Technologies

The University of Michigan School of Education and School of Information

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