In How People Learn by Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000), the authors assimilate a range of research on learners and learning and summarise three key findings which have strong implications for how we teach. These findings are as follows:
First, they argue that students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp any new concepts or information that is taught, or they may remember them for the purposes of a test but then revert to their preconceptions when outside the classroom.
Second, in order to develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and organise knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
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