constructivism

[Brian]

Basically it says that each learner has to construct knowledge/understanding
in his/her brain, and that you can't really learn something unless it "fits
into" a gap in your mental model, so it can connect to other things in your
neural net.  (Well, that's the main way, assimilation.  There's a harder way
to learn, accommodation, which is what happens when a new input /contradicts/
something you already know, and instead of forgetting the new thing, which is
what usually happens, you rearrange your old knowledge to form an understanding
that's compatible with the new thing.)