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The Social Shaping of Logo

European Commission, B-1049 Brussels; fax: +32 2 29 62 137; angelos.agalianos{at}cec.eu.int

Geoff Whitty

Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK; fax: +44 207 612 60 89; g.whitty{at}ioe.ac.uk

Richard Noss

London Knowledge Laboratory, Institute of Education, University of London, 23–29 Emerald St, London WC1N 3QS, UK; r.noss{at}ioe.ac.uk

‘Logo’ is the name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization. Developed in the USA in the late 1960s, it became the material embodiment of a radical educational philosophy and a potential vehicle for the transformation of education. In the early 1980s, Logo was introduced into mainstream education in both the USA and the UK. Within an increasingly conservative social and political context with different education policy priorities, Logo was gradually stripped of its radical potential, marginalized and, where it survived, remoulded as harmless to the mainstream educational system. This paper draws on empirical research that explored the evolution of Logo between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. The paper focuses on the social processes involved in the initial development and evolution of Logo. It shows that these processes were heavily contested. Logo was the product of complex social, technical, political and economic decisions, and the product of negotiation shaped by the concerns of the social players involved. The evolution of Logo was not linear or even primarily technical. Rather, it was a seamless web in which the technical was interwoven with the social, economic and political in ways that illustrate the dialectical interaction between historical contingency and the intentions and aspirations of individuals and communities.

Key Words: educational change • educational computing • educational technology • information and communication technology in education • social studies of technology • sociology of education • sociology of technology

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 36, No. 2, 241-267 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706053809


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