How do we learn things?

More often than not, children are taught; they are told. But we are beginning to understand that cognitive development must be connected with physical experiences, as Lynnette Brock and John Siraj-Blatchford set out in this article which explores “How we Learn Things”. In their article, Lynnette and John turn to Piaget and his theory on cognitive development and his idea that when we “learn about something new, whether it is gaining an understanding of an object or phenomenon, natural or man-made, or even about how to solve a problem, we learn it not so much from what the object, phenomenon or what the solution looks like, from its figurative characteristics, but from how it behaves when we act upon it; from the affordances that it offers us.”