Periodically, one or another instructor will hover in the back of the room to watch work developing on computer screens or in the front watching students' facial expressions. They come from all over the United States and a few from abroad. About half are on scholarship, paid for by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and charitable foundations. Summermath pedagogy takes a constructivist approach. That is, it applies the belief that learners construct their own understanding and cannot receive it readymade from teachers or textbooks.
Constructivist teachers ask a lot of questions and give few answers.
Their purpose is to create the conditions for the learner to produce her own insight, and, importantly, to see that she tests it herself for adequacy. The Logo educational philosophy fits easily in with constructivism, not surprisingly since Piagetian research on learning is in the heritage of both and because both emphasise supported discovery in a challenge-rich environment. Look back now at the five circling and hovering teachers in the computer room. Soon she will begin as teaching principal at her school. A third is Louise Grosslein, mother to two small children and a biology laboratory instructor at Mount Holyoke during the academic year.