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Roschelle, J. (1995). Learning in Interactive Environments: Prior
Knowledge and New Experience. _Public Institutions for Personal
Learning: Establishing a Research Agenda_. John Falk and Lynn
Dierking, Editors. Washington: American Association of Museums.
Retrieved November 26, 2001 from
http://www.astc.org/resource/educator/priorknw.htm
An extensive review of the impact of prior learning on new learning
experiences from the perspective of Piaget, Dewey and Vygotsky. In
this review prior learning, often viewed as a challenge to be
overcome, is seen as a crucial part of the process forcing a shift
away from viewing learning as the accumulation of information to a
process of conceptual change. For the author this implies change for
designers:
First, designers should seek to refine prior knowledge, and not
attempt to replace learners' understanding with their own. Second,
designers must anticipate a long-term learning process, of which the
short-term experience will form an incremental part. Third, designers
must remember that learning depends on social interaction;
conversations shape the form and content of the concepts that learners
construct. Only part of specialized knowledge can exist explicitly as
information; the rest must come from engagement in the practice of
discourse of the community.
These changes are supported by Piaget, Dewey and Vygotsky:
Piaget emphasizes psychological changes to schemata, Dewey
emphasizes the transformative possibilities in experience, and
Vygotsky emphasizes the role of social interaction in reconstructing
the relationship of structures to experience.
Piaget's thoughts are reminescent of Zerubavel's fine lines:
encountering conceptual boundaries leads to learning.
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