Children’s learning

Abstract

CHILDREN’S LEARNING IS an enormous topic and has been well studied and documented for many years. Ironically, rather than the picture becoming clearer, it now seems more confused than ever. As we endeavour to gain more insight into the process of children’s learning, what becomes apparent is the complexity of the situation and this complexity only serves to create distractions in our thinking, to an extent that at times it is difficult to really know what it is that we are sure about. The focus of this chapter is to provide a means of thinking about the learning events that young children are involved in. By the end of it you will not have an in-depth knowledge of all the major theories; instead, you should have a number of academic ‘hooks’ to inform your own debates on children’s learning.