If you've ever studied educational psychology, you probably know of Jean Piaget and his stages of cognitive development. Still, there's more to Piaget than his stages.
In "Constructing Knowledge and Transforming the World" Edith Ackermann writes of three other lessons she learned from working with Piaget; here's lesson 1:
Teaching can’t ever be direct. Children don’t just take-in what is being said. Instead,
they interpret, or translate, what they hear in the light of their knowledge and experience.
Willingly or unwillingly, that is, they transform the input to fit their level of
understanding, This occurs whether we like it or not. A more radical formulation of
lesson 1 would be to say that learning does not occur as a result of teaching or, in Piaget’s
own provocative terms ‘whatever you tell a child, you won’t allow her to discover it by
herself’.
Building on the work of Piaget, Seymour Papert has pioneered the concept of learning through play -- creating your own knowledge by playing and building with physical objects such as LEGO blocks. This research has been used in computer games (for example, Sim City) to enrich the learning experience.
I'm not a teacher, I'm an awakener."
-- Robert Frost