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Children's learning.

Robert S Siegler¹

¹Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. rs7k@andrew.cmu.edu

The American Psychologist

|December 15, 2005

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Children's learning is a new field that recognizes active and passive mechanisms, and qualitative and quantitative changes. Self-explanations are a promising educational source for children's learning and development.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Developmental psychology
Educational psychology

Background:

Traditional views of children's learning focused on quantitative changes.
Emerging research highlights the complexity of learning processes in children.
Children's learning involves diverse mechanisms and representations.

Purpose of the Study:

To define a new field of children's learning.
To differentiate new perspectives from older models.
To identify promising sources for educational applications.

Main Methods:

Analysis of contemporary research on children's learning.
Comparison of active and passive learning mechanisms.
Examination of qualitative and quantitative changes in learning.

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Investigation of representational and strategic variability.

Main Results:

Children's learning encompasses both active and passive processes.
Learning involves qualitative shifts alongside quantitative gains.
Significant variability exists in learning strategies and representations.
Learning pathways include adopting new approaches and modifying existing ones.
Learning occurs at a human scale, distinct from extreme computational models.

Conclusions:

A new, comprehensive field of children's learning is established.
Self-explanations are identified as a key educational tool.
Learning and development share significant commonalities.