The science and art of  education

Two theories of human learning:

Theory one lacks evidence - Click here for the evidence

1. The first theory in education said that human beings were a ‘general problem solving animal’ that had cognitive skills that it could transfer into any area, this came to dominate education, thinking was hierarchical and transferable. There is very little if any scientific evidence for such a view.
   
   

Theory two Cognitive Science provides evidence Click here for the evidence

1. The second theory in science was that the brain consists of ‘specialised cognitive modules’ whose successful development  allows thinking to occur in parallel, this is evolutionarily efficient in terms of energy cost and redundancy.
2. There is a substantial amount of evidence for this theory for example brain damaged patients, autistic people, and other animals all paradoxically if you use the first theory exhibit what that theory calls higher order thinking skills. Instead thinking skills occur in parallel due to modularisation and are almost totally dependent on long term memory of the relevant domain – they are not transferable.
3. General problem skills do exist but are so generic, minimal and subsumed in importance to these modular based skills, that they appear to be much more fixed and limited than the first theory says and develop naturally (unconsciously?) provided the right stimulus is present.