Students learn important concepts and ways of thinking by building on their own actions and experiences. In much of higher education, the primacy of textbooks and the lectures that accompany them are inconsistent with the nature of student learning. Some students manage to learn despite the problems from this emphasis, but educators can do much…

Describes study of elementary school children in Australia which was designed to determine their sequential knowledge of measuring length and to apply recent cognitive theories to predict the sequence of development of knowledge. Recent literature is reviewed, information processing skills are discussed, and skills required for measuring length…