ICLS Conference
2nd July 2010, Chicago
Sally Fincher
Disciplinary Foundations of the
Computational Sciences: Discuss
Where does CS “sit”?
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Computer Science is:
 in Kuhn’s (Kuhn, 1962) terms
“paradigmatic”,
is it has
Incidentally,
Kuhnthat
considered
clear ways of defining, ordering and investigating
education as pre-paradigmatic:
knowledge
a high
level of
 it is in Biglan’s taxonomy“characterized
(Biglan, 1973a) a by
“hard,
applied,
non-life” discipline
disagreement as to what
 as Donald reports (Donald,
2002), when
our knowledge,
students
constitutes
new
graduate we expect themwhat
to be are
able appropriate
to do “hard thinking”,
methods
to apply structured knowledge to unstructured problems.
for inquiry”.
What, I wonder, would he have
thought of the Learning
Sciences?
What do we do?
“Every discipline has its distinctive ways of knowing, which it
identifies with the activities it regards as its own:
anthropologists do fieldwork, architects design buildings,
monks meditate, and carpenters make things out of wood.
Each discipline wears its defining activity as a badge of pride in a
craftworker’s embodied competence ... [our] distinctive activity
is building things, specifically computers and computer
programs. Building things, like fieldwork and meditation and
design cannot be reduced to the reading and writing of books.
To the contrary, it is an enterprise grounded in a routine daily
practice. Sitting in the lab and working on gadgets or circuits or
programs, it is an inescapable fact that some things can be
built and others cannot ...”
Apprenticeship?
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Mark: “We know little about learning concepts,
because we (and our students) focus on skills.”
Trouble is, important components of our craft are
invisible to the naked eye, and hard to share with
others (no apprehensible artefacts) – no “studio” or
“shop” for us.
Math?
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Ulrich: “Programming is a constructive activity” and
“Computer science abstraction: invention of mental
& machine interpretable formalised schemas to
describe data structures and processing strategies”
“There is no magic”
Like math, our representations (programs &
programming language) are the stuff of our work –
not representations of something else (like
molecular models, or archaeologist’s maps, or
architect’s blueprints)
Making software with others?
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Yasmin: Fluency, Literacy. “Not just code” “If not in
the computer clubhouse, where are they going to
become engaged with programming?”
Like other human & design sciences, we have a
focus on people and their needs ... community
motivation for engagement (Scratch re-mixes),
places and spaces for collaborative development
(computer clubhouses), interdisciplinary
projectwork...
Kinship?
I invite you to sit for a moment and ponder what – if
any – disciplinary similarities there are between CS
and your own area ...
... for teaching and learning.
And I invite the panellists to suggest complements, or
bridges, to other disciplinary practices, too.
References
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Agre, P. E. (1997) Computation and Human Experience,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Biglan, A. (1973a). The Characteristics of Subject Matter in
Different Academic Areas. Journal of Applied Psychology,
57(3), 195-203.
Biglan, A. (1973b). Relationships between Subject Matter
Characteristics and the Structure and Output of University
Departments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 204-213.
Donald, J. G. (2009). The Commons: Disciplinary and
Interdisciplinary Encounters. In C. Kreber (Ed.), The University
and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond
Disciplinary Boundaries. Oxford: Routledge, Taylor and
Francis.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions.
Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
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