Learning and memory have been issues of central concern to psychology since the late 19th century. Over
the past 40 years the development of cognitive science has greatly accelerated the pace of studies of these
phenomena. More recently the learning sciences have extended such studies to the classroom.
One dominant school of thought about learning, one that is particularly prevalent in all discussions of
science learning, is constructivism. There are two basic tenets of all forms of constructivism. (1) Knowledge can not
be transmitted from one individual to another; rather, knowledge is built by the learner using internal cognitive
processes acting on stimuli from the external environment. (2) The learner’s process of building new knowledge
starts with a foundation of everything that he or she already knows; the learner is never a blank slate (tabula rasa).
Ten key ideas can be extracted from these premises; this article explores
their educational implications.
