Applying a Constructionist Frame to Learning about Sustainability

doi:10.4236/ce.2012.326122

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Creative Education

2012. Vol.3, Special Issue, 818-823

Published Online October 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ce.2012.326122

818

Applying a Constructionist Frame to Learning about Sustainability

Maria Daskolia1, Chronis Kynigos2

1Environmental Education Lab, Depar tment of Pedagogy, Universi ty of A th en s, Athens, Greece

2Educational Technology Lab, Department of Pedagogy, Univer sity of Athens, Athens, Greece

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Received August 30th, 2012; revised September 2 7th, 2012; accepted Octob e r 13th, 2012

Sustainability as a concept is by nature complex and elusive and therefore difficult to address. Creative

thinking is thought among the core abilities needed to be fostered for developing a more integrated under-

standing of sustainability issues and for achieving a more sustainable world. We argue that Construction-

ism offers an appropriate frame of identifying and fostering creativity by viewing learning as an experien-

tial process of collaboratively generating new ideas and meaningful digital artifacts through the active

engagement with microworld. The study reported in this paper is based on the design and implementa-

tion of a pedagogical intervention aiming to engage students in creatively tinkering with a game mi-

croworld along with the concept of sustainability. Our analysis focuses on one group of students and exa-

mines how ideas and shared understandings of sustainability emerge and evolve along with the creation of

a “sustainable city” digital game and through the students’ constructive interaction with a related mi-

croworld.

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainable City; Creativity; Constructionism; Game Design; Half-Baked

Microworld

Dealing Creatively with the “Difficult” Concept

of Sustainability

Sustainability as a concept is by nature complex, ambiguous,

context-specific and value-laden, and therefore difficult to ad-

dress. Complexity stems from its multi-faceted character and

the need to apply simultaneously various perspectives to grasp

it holistically (Liarakou, Daskolia, & Flogaitis, 2007). Along-

side this there are so many suggestions of what sustainable

societies should look like and what changes are needed to

achieve sustainability that a great degree of uncertainty and

indeterminacy is attached to defining what “most sustainable”

means (Wals, 2010a). What is also considered as sustainable

now might turn out not to be in the future or it may acquire a

different meaning in another context. These features render

sustainability quite elusive and ambiguous as a concept and

therefore “difficult” to teach if seen through a more traditional

pedagogical lens. Yet, sustainability issues are currently among

the key topics of most school curricula worldwide. Teaching

and learning about them is thought as a sine qua non condition

for children and young people to develop a deeper understand-

ing, a willing disposition and an action competence to identify

and deal with unsustainable ways of thinking and practices and

to bring change in their everyday life and the world (Scott &

Gough, 2004; Jensen & Schnack, 1997).

So, how can we get students to generate meanings, develop

action competence and embody appropriate mindsets around

sustainability issues? In this paper, we describe our design of an

intervention focused on enhancing creativity within construc-

tionist activity, where students collectively tinker with a digital

game base d on the idea of sust ainable city, and then we discuss

our findings from studying its implementation. Creative think-

ing as the co-construction of new understandings and the shar-

ing of alternative perspectives for the design and pursuit of a

more sustainable world is acknowledged among those core

abilities needed for better grasping the elusive and relativistic

character of the concept and for achieving the goals of sustain-

ability (Wals, 2010b). We argue that constructionism offers an

appropriate frame of teaching and learning along this line of

though, by allowing the creation of shared meanings and arte-

facts and by facilitating discussion and negotiation over alter-

native conceptual suggestions of sustainability while tinkering

with related microworld.

The ambiguity characterizing sustainability issues can be

turned into a fruitful arena for creative constructionist activity.

There is an “appealing vagueness” inherent in the concept

(Redclift, 1994) which makes it a “boundary object” (Star &

Griesemer, 1989), that is a “plastic” enough entity to be inter-

preted and employed by more that one groups or communities

in ways that make se nse to them, and at the same time a “rob us t”

enough construction that manifests a common identity across

all groups and communities. This approach of viewing sustain-

ability is very close to what Meggill (1995) calls “heuristic

relativism”, that is the recognition that there are limits in the

way our perspective allows us to develop a fully-fledged view

of a situation and that we need to stand off and explore others’

or alternative perspectives as complementary frames for better

grasping reality. From a pedagogical point of view, dealing

with “boundary” concepts through a heuristic relativism frame

of thinking provides many opportunities for teachers and lear-

ners to get engaged in dialogical forms of meaning-construction

and perspective-sharing and to expand the “boundaries” of their

knowing of and being in the world. This is what some would

also identify as the essence of creative thinking and learning

(Fernández-Cárdenas, 2008). In either way, education has to

cultivate learning approaches leading to a creative appropria-

tion of knowledge for students to be able to develop a more

integrated understanding of sustainability. It has also to foster

M. DASKOLIA, C. KYNIGOS

creativity by facilitating alternative thinking and the emergence

of new ideas for empowering young people to envision and

design a more sustainable world (Wals, 2010a).

Recent developments in the study of creativity per se empha-

size the inherent complexity of the phenomenon, the collective

character of creative processes and the “situatedness” of the

activities (Daskolia, Dimos, & Kampylis, 2012). Among cur-

rent trends in the conceptualization of creativity is that it is not

necessarily related to some exceptional ability but rather to a

potential everyone is capable of displaying, which may be ex-

pressed at various manifestations of a person’s everyday life, it

is fuelled by collective processes and is possible to be fostered

through education. Constructionism both as an epistemology

and a learning theory gives distinct emphasis to learners’ crea-

tive expression and learning through the active exploration,

modification and creation of digital artifacts (Papert, 1993;

Kafai & Resnick, 1996). From a constructionist perspective

creativity is mainly identified with the generation of new/novel

tangible output(s) (the digital artifacts). Digital media—micro-

worlds in particular—are perceived as appropriately designed

environments and tools that learners can use to construct

“meaningful objects” (Papert, ibid; Kynigos, 2007). These ob-

jects are the tangible outputs of their discursive, meaning-

making processes while they interact with the microworld and

the learning context; they are at the same time representations

of their ideas and understandings of the “world”. Construction-

ism attributes equal importance to the creative tool (the mi-

croworld), the creative product (the artifact) and the creative

process of learning. Actually there is a symbiotic and synergetic

relationship among the three: the microworld is designed to

evolve along with the knowledge its users develop while they

tinker with it and the artifacts they create.

Particular emphasis is nevertheless placed on the learning

context within which both constructionist activities as processes

and products occur (Resnick, 1996). Open-ended technological

and learning environments that treat microworld as “boundary

objects” and allow learners to use them in personally meaning-

ful ways, to collaboratively work with and discuss over them

and their key concepts, or to question them and want to modify

and improve them, are important coordinates of a context fos-

tering various forms of creativity. We therefore argue that the

seeds already exist in the theory of constructionism to address

and study creativity through a more integrated conception,

which is as a function of a person’s ability, presuming an inten-

tional process, occurring within a specific learning environment

and entailing the generation of new products (Kampylis & Val-

tanen, 2010).

In the study reported in this paper we designed and imple-

mented a pedagogical intervention with the aim to engage stu-

dents in creatively tinkering with a game microworld along

with the concept of sustainability. Our approach moves within a

constructionist perspective viewing learning as an experiential

process of collaboratively generating new or alternative ideas

through the active engagement with the construction and

de-construction of meaningful digital artifacts with the use of

microworld. In previous studies we have addressed some other

parameters of a constructionist approach to teaching and learn-

ing about sustainability with game microworld (Kynigos &

Daskolia, 2011). In this study we focus on the creative potential

of learning about sustainability through constructionist activi-

ties.

The Study

The Study Context and Participants

The study presented in this paper is part of a design-based

research which was conducted within Metafora, an EU-funded

R&D project (http://www.metafora-project.org). It took place

in a secondary education school located in a central area of

Athens and was carried out during the last three months of the

school year: it started in early March and lasted until mid June

2012. Overall, 11 two-hour sessions were held on a weekly

basis. Eighteen students (9 girls and 9 boys) participated in the

study. They were all members of an afternoon Environmental

Education Club, a mixed-class group consisting of 7th, 8th and

9th graders. Depending on the activities participants were allo-

cated in groups of 6 or in sub-groups of 2 to 3 students. All

sessions took place in the school’s computer lab and each group

was assigned to a computer to work on.

The Scenario and the Tools Employed

The students’ activity was with an E-slate Microworld Kit

which we called “Sus-x”, i.e. “Sustainable-system”

(http://etl. ppp.uoa.gr/_content/download/eslate_kits.htm). This

is a kit allowing the teacher or student user(s) to construct a

sim-city like game so that players do best when they are sensi-

tive and thoughtful about how to ensure or promote sustainabil-

ity in a particular context (system). A special case of this Mi-

croworld Kit addresses “sustainability in the city”, which is

why we named it “Sus-City”.

The Sus-City microworld allows users to create their city

background map, by loading, drawing or editing their city im-

age, and place objects on it, the city-sites they want their city to

have. They have also to decide on the properties against which

they will rate (give specific values to) all city-sites. A set of

default (initial) values, a set of threshold values (indicating

when the system’s sustainability is violated by the player’s

choices) and the game play rules (maximum time and number

of choices) have to be determined by the users. They can also

inform players about their game performance through relative

messages.

Based on the Sus-City microworld kit we designed a “half-

baked microworld” (Kynigos, 2007) to get students started

thinking about urban sustainability and sustainable lifestyles.

We deliberately called this game microworld “PerfectVille”

(Figure 1) as it was purposefully designed to project an un-

sustainable model of urban living, which is close to what Lange

and Meyer (2009) describe as the “western new middle-class”

lifestyle. This is a highly consumerist and hectic way of life

which embodies the idea of “the welfare society” as publicized

through neo-liberal socio-economic perspectives. Its core ele-

ments, high purchasing power to satisfy individual-based needs,

the pursuit of social status, high visibility and personal security

and high commercialization of quality of life are thought to be

at the roots of most unsustainable practices of modern societies.

The students were given the challenge to play the game, dis-

cuss what’s wrong with it with respect to the sustainability of

the city and then change Perfect Ville into their own “sustain-

able city” game (“My Sus-City”). This task could be carried out

by a single student or group o f students with the kit alone. How-

ever, in the Metafora project we have been developing a system

to support learning-to-learn-together activities. The system afford-

M. DASKOLIA, C. KYNIGOS

Figure 1.

The PerfectVille game microworld.

ed the students of the study with two more tools which were

co-existent and available during their work. One was Lasad, a

discussion and argumentation space, and the other a Planning

tool space for collaboratively planning and reflecting on their

work.

Data Collection and Analysis

The analysis reported in this paper was based on the data

collected from the 8th and 9th session of the study. Audio re-

cording and screen capturing software was used to collect in-

formation on the students’ discursive interactions within their

groups while constructing their game, and on the evolvement of

their digital artifacts. These data were coupled with data from

the researchers’ observation reports. All recorded data were

transcribed.

We used microgenetic analysis (Siegler, 2006) within a re-

search design paradigm (Cobb et al., 2003) to analyze how new

ideas, alternative perspectives and tangible artifacts (the games)

were created within the context of the discursive constructionist

activity that the students were involved and as a response to

their interaction with the Sus-City microworld, the challenge

set to them and the researchers’ interventions in facilitating

their learning. The analytical framework we employed to iden-

tify and discuss creativity is an adaptation of the categorical

scheme suggested by Kampylis and Valtanen (2010). It views

creativity 1) as being a function of the individual’s and group’s

ability; 2) as being situated at the nexus of several intercon-

nected processes; 3) as emerging from a facilitative learning

context; and 4) as entailing the generation of new/novel abstract

ideas and concrete outputs (digital artifacts). At the same time

however, we kept an open mind in our attempt to capture the

complexity of the learning situations we were observing and the

interweaving and interactions between the different layers of

the activity, i.e. student one-to-one interactions, group work,

teacher interventions, uses of and changes made to the digital

game.

Findings and Discussion

This section presents and discusses our findings from the

analysis of one case (group of students) consisting of two

13-year girls, Christina and Georgia. We provide an overview

of the students’ engagement with creatively constructing their

knowledge about sustainability and collaboratively constructing

their game. In presenting the findings we follow the four-cate-

gory scheme of our analytical framework.

Creativity as a F unction of the Indivi d u al’s and

Group’s Ability

Although both girls showed an authentic interest in the task

set to them and claimed an equal share in the process, their

degree of involvement both in generating new ideas and con-

structing the game was not alike. We view this—at least to

some extent—as a function of their personality and as related to

their individual creative ability.

Christina has a strong personality, she is eager enough to

take initiatives and contribute with fresh ideas. She is very

committed to and fastidious about whatever she undertakes.

She always claims a leading role in a team. During the task,

Christina had a more active and imaginative participation in all

stages of the design process, from the selection of the city

background to setting the time frame for the game. She was

also quite eloquent in expressing her ideas about sustainability

and supporting them with arguments.

Georgia, on the other hand, has a milder personality. She is

rather timid and usually leaves to the others both the initiative

and the final decision to take. During the task she was less

talkative in expressing her views and in indicating changes to

the microworld. However, she tried to stay involved in almost

all decisions related to design issues and to collaborate with her

group mate on almost all aspects of their common work. There

were moments that Georgia even surpassed herself by claiming

with tenor to take control of the mouse so that she had a more

direct interaction with the microworld.

Despite the individual differences in personality and creative

expression we would say that some kind of complementarity

was developed between the two girls with regard to their par-

ticipation in the constructionist activity. We view this as an

effect of the collaborative processes the two girls were involved

in, upon which their group or “middle c” (Moran, 2010) crea-

tive potential was dynamically built and expressed throughout

the task. This is a special case of creative ability which is fos-

tered and revealed in shared group processes towards fulfilling

a meaningful goal and characterizes the collective function of

individual members.

Creativity as the Nexus of Several Types of Processes

Meaning-generation on both the idea of “the sustainable city”

and game design was evolved through the students’ active dis-

play, exchange and negotiation of their ideas while they were

collaboratively working on the game microworld. Actually,

Sus-City offered a structured agenda for them to collaboratively

propose and elaborate on their perspectives with regard to such

a complex issue. In their discursive interaction and while “tink-

ering with” their representations of the sustainable city, the

students employed a range of cognitive strategies and commu-

nicative patterns to ascribe meaning to sustainability. Our find-

ings indicate that there is a consecutive scalability in the stu-

dents’ employment of various cognitive and communicative

processes that goes along with their interpretation of sustain-

ability. These discursive meaning-making processes seem also

to be in line with the students’ sequential intervention on

changing the various fields of the microworld (background map,

820

M. DASKOLIA, C. KYNIGOS

city-site objects, properties, values, etc.). The selected episodes

presented below are indicative of this multiple “evolution” that

occurred within the context of the students’ constructivist en-

gagement.

In the first episode the group goes through the first step in

constructing their game, which is to set the city background.

They review a set of city-images to decide which one is closer

to their idea of a more sustainable city. They observe and dis-

cern the particular features of each of them. Their argumenta-

tion is rather poor and suggestions are put forward without

much justification. However, the students propose three basic

features of a sustainable city, which are recurrently identified in

later phases of their constructionist engagement: open green

spaces, physical water recourses and less reliance in automo-

biles as a means of urban transport.

Christina: How do you like this one? (She shows at image No.

9). Do you think it’s better?

Georgia: Let’s see the next one.

Christina: Wait, there’re a lot of green places in this too.

(They are still talking about image No. 9)

Georgia: Move on…

Christina: Ok… not this one (They look at image No. 15).

Georgia: Neither this one (They look at image No. 2).

Christina: No… not this one (They look at image No. 3).

Georgia: This one (No. 6)… It has lakes too. Can you see?

Christina: Yes, but it has a lot of cars, too. Look at this…

Georgia: This city has too many cars too. (They look again at

image No. 9).

The second episode is taken from a subsequent phase of the

students’ constructionist activity. It is indicative of how their

shared representation of the sustainable city has already started

to “expand”. After they have selected the city-image and

changed their game’s background map accordingly, the two

girls focus on which new city-sites to add and where to put

them on the map. This time the students get involved in more

elaborated argumentation and negotiation processes over their

proposed ideas. They also begin to view urban sustainability

not only in terms of a “greener” or “cleaner” environment but

as involving several social parameters too, such as the creation

of health care services, new job opportunities and commu-

nity-based organizations. They view all three of them as being

in mutual dependence with a “healthier” natural environment.

The economic dimension of sustainability also emerges in the

students’ thought about sustainability, as for example when

Georgia casts the idea for an “environmental office” or when

Christina suggests adding a “store selling photovoltaic systems”

as a business opportunity allowing for profit and being in the

benefit of the environment.

Georgia: We can place the “health clinic” over here (she

points to the city-map). Close to the park.

Christina: Yes! Cause the air is healthier over there… (They

move the “health clinic” closer to the park). What if we put an

annex of the “Scouts” organisation over here? (She points to

the city-map)

Georgia: Do you think the others (the other group with whom

they collaborate) will agree with this? “What do you think if we

add ‘Scouts’ as a new point on the city-map? It is an associa-

tion that helps protect the environment?” (She types a chat

message to the other group).

Georgia: Let’s have an “environmental office” too. It’s an

employment opportunity for the environment.

Christina: Yup, why not? Let’s put it here… (She points to a

particular place in the city-map).

Christina: Yes… ooh, I got an idea! Let’s create a store sell-

ing photovoltaic systems. Let’s put it here (She points to the

map)… It’s near the sea.

Creativity as Emerging from a Facilitating Learning

Context

New ideas and understandings of the sustainability concept

and game design emerged as a response to the learning en-

vironment created by the microworld and the teachers’ role in

inciting thinking on it. The following excerpt is indicative of

how the teacher’s (researcher’s) intervention to initiate further

reflection on the meaning of sustainability, by introducing a

schematic representation of the sustainability concept, enhanced

students’ thinking (Christina’s in particular) of alternative sus-

tainability opportunities related to the citizens’ sense of well-

being. The teacher’s intention was to provide some scaffolding

to the students’ thought that would help broaden their percep-

tion of sustainability from including just the natural environ-

ment. As a result Christina started identifying the “social”

dimension of sustainability in their city too:

R1: Ok girls… Can we have a closer look at this scheme?

(She shows them a representation of sustainability as being at

the intersection of three circles: “environment”, “society” and

“economy”). What does it say about sustainability?... The city

you designed in your game, does it pay enough attention to

supporting a healthy community or a vital economy, apart from

focusing only on the natural environment?

Christina: Mmm, the people… they should be happy with

their life in this city… There are many facilities adding to their

well-being... Such as this pool over there (she points to the

map)… There is also a small port over there. People can have

many nice walks in this city. They could have some nice boat

trips on the river too!

The second excpert shows how the glimpse of a new

perspective in viewing the city’s sustainability strikes C hristina

as she is prompted by another researcher to review the initial

values she had assigned to each of the city-sites. The researcher

wanted to help the students develop a better awareness of how

their game design choices can shape the players’ strategies. By

reviewing the “money” values in various city-sites, Christina

realises there is a lot of monetary expenditure involved while

“using” the city. For people to cherish the various goods and

services provided by a city, which add to their quality of life,

they have “to pay some fare” in exchange. The exception is

with some public goods, such as parks. Quality of life is never-

theless very much connected to needs, and thus a highly

socially-constructed concept. Such a perspective offers to the

students a novel frame of approaching sustainability as a com-

plex and value-laden issue with many interrelated dimensions.

R3: So, in your game, the player has to go to work (select the

“office” city-site) twice to earn more money?

Christina: Yes, in order not to run out of their money re-

sources… Because when visiting most of the city places you

spend money. If you go to the “bakery”, you spend money… If

you go to the “supermarket”, it is for buying your dairy foods…

You go to the “mall” to buy clothes, etc… To the “clinic”, you

have to pay the doctors… To the “Concert Hall”, you have to

pay a ticket to watch an opera… To the “restaurant”, you have

to pay for the food you are served… To the “club”, you pay for

your drinks… To the “park”, you… Oh no, this is one of the few

M. DASKOLIA, C. KYNIGOS

places you don’t have to pay anything!

Creativity as the Generation of a New Artifact and a

New Conception

Tinkering with the Sus-City microworld to construct a new

“sustainable city” game allowed students to get engaged in

meaning-generation processes that led them to a better under-

standing of the sustainability concept along with the creation of

a new artifact. The students made several modifications to Per-

fect Ville in order to construct a new game that would better

represent their idea about sustainability.

Actually the new game (Figure 2) offers a more balanced

conception of sustainability compared to Perfect Ville, which is

leaning equally into its environmental, social and economic

dimensions. More particularly:

 The students altered the city background by selecting and

uploading another one. Their representation of a “sustain-

able city” has more green areas and other natural elements

(such as a lake) intertwined in the city’s fabric, le ss ca rs a nd

a balanced interplay between more and less densely popu-

lated areas. The natural environment seems to be the domi-

nant perspective projected in their conception of sustain-

ability. However, the other two dimensions, economy and

society, are also present in the students’ discussion about

the criteria for choosing this image. For example, the stu-

dents justified the presence of “some skyscrapers” as in-

dicative of the city’s economic prosperity, although they

would prefer they were less visible in the image. They also

argued that their city offers plenty of opportunities for

leading a good life. They thus identified quality of life as

one of the sustainability’s parameters.

 The students deleted four city-sites (“football pitch”, “rail-

way station”, “luna-park”, and “fast-food”) as not particu-

larly contributin g to the susta inability of their c ity. Th ey also

added eight new city-sites: “The Scouts”, “environmental

office”, “theatre”, the “photo voltaics store”, “Hospital”,

“swimming pool”, “beach”, and the “cycling path”, as fur-

ther enhancing the potential for d evelop ing more sustainab le

lifestyles. Actua l ly, their prim e cr iteri a for constru cting t heir

sustainable city seem to be how close to their personal zone

of experience the city sites are and with some of them, how

much there is an obvious “environmental-enhancing” func-

tion in them. Concerns having to do with the social and

economic dimensions of sustainability were less explicit

although present. The inclusion of various city-sites declares

the idea of a city offering a range of opportunities for diverse

groups of people to pursue a quality life according to their

needs.

 Among other modifications the t wo girls moved city-sites on

the map several times so that a better matching between their

function and the city image was achieved. They also re-set

the default values and individual values in all city-sites with

the aim to offer a more realistic evaluation of each site. Fi-

nally, they changed the threshold conditions and game play

rules to render the game more challenging and thus more

enjoyable for users to play.

Concluding Remarks

The study presented in this paper aimed to identify the crea-

tive potential offered by a constructionist approach to teaching

and learning about sustainability. A pedagogical intervention

Figure 2.

“My Sus-City” game microworld as created by Christina and Georgia.

was designed to engage Greek High school students in collabo-

ratively tinkering with a microworld on the idea of sustainable

city. Our focus was on studying whether and how creativity is a

situated dimension of constructionist learning arising from the

interaction of the students with a microworld and the learning

environment. Our findings suggest that the Sus-City micro-

world empowered the students to collaboratively articulate,

display, and elaborate new ideas and to develop and negotiate

alternative perspectives with the view to actively interpret a

complex and fuzzy concept such as that of sustainability. Actu-

ally the microworld offered not only an appropriate learning

environment where students could allow their imagination to

deploy and construct their game, but also a structured agenda

that prompted them to collaboratively think and share their

ideas about sustainability. More particularly, the students were

challenged by the task set to them, to create their own “sustain-

able city” game, and they were aided by the microworld to enter

into intentional, shared meaning-making processes that led to

the emergence of new understandings and a tangible outcome,

their game. Both their discursive interaction over the meaning

and features of the sustainable city, their generated ideas and

the new game provide evidence of the creative potential of

appropriately designed constructionist activities.

Within the context of our study we addressed creativity

through a more integrated conception, that is 1) as a function of

an individual’s and/or group’s ability; 2) as being situated at the

nexus of several interconnected processes; 3) as occurring

within a specific learning environment; and 4) as entailing the

generation of new concepts and artifacts. Our proposed ana-

lytical framework is supported by the findings of the study.

Working within the design research paradigm enabled us to

identify creativity in many more hidden dimensions of learn-

ing situation than the obvious, and thus to expand the tradi-

tional view from within the constructionist community that

connects creativity to the generation of digital artifacts only.

We argue that this expanded view of the creative potential of

learning situations can be of particular value for the theory of

constructionism while at the same time it can serve as a useful

framework of designing and studying constructionist activities

and tools with creativity in mind.

This study gives some insight of how tinkering with a mi-

croworld can allow students to enter into intentional and par-

ticipative meaning-making processes that lead to the emergence

822

M. DASKOLIA, C. KYNIGOS

of new ideas and understandings about difficult concepts, such

as that of sustainability. This is of particular importance for

Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable De-

velopment that are in a constant search for new theoretical ap-

proaches and tools to support learning about the complex and

multifaceted nature of environmental and sustainability issues

in more meaningful ways. Although preliminary empirical evi-

dence is promising, more future research is needed as to

whether and how constructionist pedagogical designs can offer

appropriate modes and tools for learning about these issues.

Moreover, extending constructionist frames of epistemology

and learning beyond its traditional subject domains of applica-

tion, such as mathematics, science and computers education, to

social sciences, humanities and the arts is a major challenge yet

to be undertaken. This is particularly true for educational do-

mains that promote interdisciplinary, systemic and critical

knowledge about complex concepts and issues related to con-

temporary realities such as those dealt within the context of

Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable De-

velopment.

Acknowledgements

The study presented in this paper is funded by EU-R&D

project “Metafora-Learning to Learn Together: A visual lan-

guage for social orchestration of educational activities” (EC/

FP7, Grant agreement: 257872).

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