Learning mathematics from examples and by doing

Abstract: "Human learning takes place in a wide variety of situations and almost surely employs many different processes. During the past few years, considerable attention has been paid to the ways in which people can learn from procedures by examining worked-out examples and by solving problems--learning from examples and learning by doing. In this paper we wish to discuss the process of learning from examples, and to discuss a number of experiments with high-school students employing this learning paradigm. The experiments, in addition to comparing this learning strategy with more traditional ones, provided us with information about the processing actually used by students who employed the new strategies. By 'traditional strategies' we mean procedures in which the teacher and textbook play an active role in presenting and explaining the material to be learned."