Children's learning.

Abstract

A new field of children's learning is emerging. This new field differs from the old in recognizing that children's learning includes active as well as passive mechanisms and qualitative as well as quantitative changes. Children's learning involves substantial variability of representations and strategies within individual children as well as across different children. The path of learning involves the introduction of new approaches as well as changes in the frequency of prior ones. The rate and the breadth of learning tend to occur at a human scale, intermediate between the extremes depicted by symbolic and connectionist models. Learning has many sources; one that is particularly promising for educational purposes is self-explanations. Overall, contemporary analyses show that learning and development have a great deal in common.