Ihde meets Papert: combining postphenomenology and constructionism for a future agenda of philosophy of education in the era of digital technologies

ABSTRACTThe paper proposes a framework for thinking about digital technologies, including AI, in education. The framework combines Don Ihde's postphenomenology and Seymour Papert's constructionism. The former is rooted in the philosophy of technology, the latter – in education and technology. The intersections between the two theories have been mentioned but not explored. There are biographical affinities between the two thinkers, and their ground-breaking works were published in adjacent years – Ihde's Technics and Praxis in 1979 and Papert's Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas in 1980. The intersection between the two theories is examined through a review of constructionism through the prism of the Ihde's four postphenomenological relations showing how each relation matches a major constructionist thread: for embodiment relations, personalization fits; for hermeneutic relations – computational thinking; for alterity relations – microworld; and for background relations – democratization. The paper shows how the two theories contribute to each other and enrich the analysis.KEYWORDS: Constructionismpostphenomenologyembodimentcomputational thinkingalterity Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).