The Formation of Children’s Technological Concepts: A Study of What it Means To Do Technology from a Child’s Perspective

Constructivist theory epitomizes learning as an active, continuous process whereby learners take information from their environment and construct personal interpretations and meanings based upon prior knowledge and experience (Kozulin, 1998). In a socio-cultural interpretation, learning is understood to take part in a personalized social context. Thus, the acquisition of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values are a process of enculturation, especially when the learner participates in authentic and context dependent activity (McCormick, Murphy, Hennessy, & Davidson, 1996; Koulaidis & Tsatsaroni, 1996). It follows that individual construction of technological knowledge occurs predominantly in socially interactive settings, which are shared with the members of the learning community, essentially through the meanings of context dependent language and actions (Gergen, 1995; Wertsch, 1991; Vygotsky, 1986).