Although early challenges to the efficacy of passive learning (Piaget 1937) are well
known, standard schooling models continued to be structured on traditional assumptions
about teaching and learning. Advances in the learning sciences, which seek to better
understand the cognitive and social processes that underlie effective learning, have more
effectively questioned these assumptions (Sawyer 2006). The focus on learning more
broadly construed, including informal and peer learning, has reframed the way we think of
both learning and teaching, and also reframed the role and function of schools.