The learning-by-doing principle.

Abstract

Learning by doing has been a principle for thousands of years; it has had many proponents, including Plato, Thomas Hobbes, English and Spanish epigrammatists, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, cultural anthropologists, Montessori, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner; and it has had many forms, including learning by doing, discovery versus instruction, practical experience versus book-learning, the practice-theory-practice dialectic, and proof upon practice. The paper includes discussion of several of the forms, with examples, to establish what the principle means; modifications of the principle such as instructed learning-by-doing and a role of reasoning; and possible explanations of its effectiveness.