Think about the last time you learned something truly new – not just heard about it, but actually changed how you behaved because of it. Maybe you stopped using a shortcut after it caused a problem, or picked up a skill after watching someone else do it. That shift – from not knowing to knowing, from old behavior to new – is learning in its most fundamental sense. And for children, this process begins long before they ever step into a classroom.
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What learning actually means
Learning is often mistaken for simply gathering information. But psychologists define it more precisely. As explained in OpenStax Psychology, learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience. Three words in that definition carry the most weight: relatively permanent, change, and experience.
The “relatively permanent” part is what separates learning from a passing moment of awareness. Richard Mayer’s classic definition, widely cited in instructional design, makes this clear: if a student performs well on a test after last-minute cramming but cannot recall the information a week later, genuine learning may not have occurred. The knowledge was never durably encoded. True learning sticks – not necessarily forever, but long enough to be recalled, applied, and built upon.
The “change” element means learning is visible in what a person does differently – how they respond to a situation, how they solve a problem, or what they now know that they didn’t before. And “experience” points to the source of that change. According to the NIH’s StatPearls, learning is the change in behavior of an organism that results from prior experience, with environmental, cognitive, and emotional factors all playing a role.
This definition also helps distinguish learning from biological changes. If a child’s behavior improves because of medication, or declines because of illness or fatigue, those aren’t instances of learning – they’re temporary physiological states. Learning requires interaction with the environment as its source.
Learning through direct experience: what the hot pan teaches us
One of the clearest illustrations of how learning works in early childhood is deceptively simple. A toddler, curious about a pot on the stove, reaches out and touches it. The sensation of heat and pain is immediate. That one moment – brief and unplanned – changes the child’s behavior in a lasting way. She now avoids hot surfaces. No one sat her down for a lesson. No flashcard was used. Yet the learning was real, durable, and consequential.
This is what behavioral psychologists describe as learning through direct experience: as we interact with our environment, we alter how we perceive it and how we behave within it. The experience doesn’t have to be formal or structured. What matters is that the encounter leaves a mark on behavior that persists beyond the moment itself.
The hot pan example also shows how powerfully sensory experience drives early learning. Michigan State University Extension notes that sensory play – combining touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell – is the foundation of all the skills children will later use in school to read, write, and solve problems. When a child stores a sensory memory (the burn of heat, the weight of a block, the sound of water splashing), that memory becomes raw material for future understanding.
Children as active learners
Children are not passive recipients of knowledge handed to them by adults. From infancy, they are active constructors of understanding – constantly experimenting, testing, and drawing conclusions from the world around them.
As educators Mary Hohmann and David Weikart described, active learning is the process by which a child, by acting on objects and interacting with people, ideas, and events, constructs new understanding. No one else can have these experiences for the child. A child banging spoons on different surfaces isn’t just making noise – she is discovering that different materials produce different sounds. A toddler stacking bowls and knocking them over is learning about size, balance, and cause-and-effect. These aren’t accidental outcomes of play. They are the learning itself.
This idea connects directly to what NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) describes as a central principle of early childhood education: rather than viewing children as empty vessels receiving information, educators should see them as active explorers and discoverers who bring their prior knowledge into every new experience. Children’s natural curiosity, their instinct to experiment and problem-solve, is not a distraction from learning – it is the mechanism of learning.
Discovery learning vs. guided learning
Not all learning happens the same way. Broadly, two pathways describe how children come to understand their world: discovery learning and guided learning.
Discovery learning
Discovery learning happens when a child encounters something independently and figures it out through their own actions. The toddler and the hot pan is a classic case. So is the child who, without any adult instruction, places a heavy block on top of a lighter one and watches the tower topple – then adjusts her approach the next time.
Research published in WIREs Cognitive Science traces the concept of discovery learning to Jerome Bruner’s work in the 1960s, describing it as learning through active inquiry and problem-solving, where the learner participates mindfully rather than passively receiving instruction. In pure discovery learning, there is no instructor constraint or intervention – the child drives both the pace and the content of what is learned.
The strength of this approach lies in ownership. Jerome Bruner proposed that it is through discovery that learners develop a sense of ownership over their own learning – making it more meaningful and more likely to be retained. When a child figures something out on her own, she remembers it differently than if she had simply been told.
Guided learning (guided discovery)
Guided learning – sometimes called guided discovery – occurs when an adult deliberately structures an experience to support learning, without simply delivering an answer. Think of a mother sitting with her child, showing her how to dip a wand into soapy water and blow gently to create a bubble. The child is still doing, still discovering. But the adult has shaped the environment and the activity to make a particular kind of learning more likely to happen.
NAEYC’s principles of developmentally appropriate practice describe this as the middle ground on a continuum between fully child-directed play and direct instruction – and note that neither extreme alone is effective. Leaving children entirely on their own offers no scaffolding for when they get stuck; purely directing them offers no space for genuine discovery. The most effective early learning environments blend both.
Guided discovery, in Mayer’s framework, is similar to Vygotsky’s concept of scaffolding – support that is responsive to where the learner currently is, with more guidance offered to beginners and progressively less as the learner becomes more capable. Three approaches have been shown to make guided discovery particularly effective: strategic presentation of materials, immediate feedback after attempts, and probing questions that prompt the child to explain or reflect on what they’ve done.
Why both pathways matter
Discovery learning and guided learning are not competing philosophies – they are complementary tools. Evidence from the science of learning suggests that guided discovery actually results in increased learning for all children relative to both unsupported free play and conventional direct instruction. The adult doesn’t need to provide the answer – just set the stage, limit the noise, and let the child reach the learning goal through their own action.
For children who are still developing the cognitive and emotional resources to persist through challenges, that adult presence matters enormously. As early childhood specialists observe, when a young learner struggles, guidance through scaffolding techniques allows the skilled teacher to extend learning for children who grasp a concept quickly, while supporting and consolidating it for those who need more time. The learner advances step by step, gradually becoming less reliant on adult input as their confidence and competence grow.
This is also where the role of the educator shifts. Rather than being a source of information, the teacher becomes – as NAEYC puts it – a guide at the side. The child’s curiosity leads. The adult creates the conditions for that curiosity to become knowledge.
Learning is not a passive event
Perhaps the most important insight from how psychologists and educators define learning is this: it cannot happen to a child – it must happen through them. A child can sit in a room where information is being spoken and absorb nothing. But give that same child a textured object, a question, a problem to solve, or a situation she hasn’t encountered before – and her brain gets to work.
Sensory activities naturally support the scientific method of observing, forming a hypothesis, experimenting, and drawing conclusions – long before children are formally taught any of this. Every time a child touches something new, stacks something unexpected, or watches what happens when she pours water from one cup to another, she is running a small experiment. And the behavioral change that follows – the fact that she now knows something she didn’t before – is learning in its most authentic form.
What do you think? When you consider how children learn through direct experience and active exploration, how does that change the way you think about the role of planned activities vs. unstructured time in early education? And if guided discovery is more effective than either free play or direct instruction alone, what does the right balance look like in practice?
References
- https://opentext.wsu.edu/psych105/chapter/6-2-what-is-learning/
- https://distancelearning.institute/instructional-design/understanding-learning-key-behavioral-change/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK562189/
- https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/
- https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/cognitive_development_and_sensory_play
- https://www.teachearlyyears.com/learning-and-development/view/encouraging-active-learners
- https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/summer2022/power-playful-learning
- https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.1199
- https://www.myteachingcupboard.com/blog/benefits-of-play-based-learning
- https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap/principles
- https://edsacredprofane.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/an-argument-for-discovery-in-the-early-years-classroom/
- https://www.goodstart.org.au/parenting/exploring-the-benefits-of-sensory-play
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