Learning with new information technologies in schools: perspectives from the psychology of learning and instruction

Abstract  The starting point of the present paper is that the New Information Technologies can only contribute substantially to the improvement of schooling, if they are appropriately embedded in powerful learning environments. The realization of this embedding requires that inquiry and development relating to educational computing are more explicitly based on recent research on learning and instruction, because this domain of investigation has produced an empirically underpinned knowledge base that can guide and orient the design of rich and powerful computer-supported learning environments. In that perspective a series of important and relevant findings of research on learning and instruction are reviewed; they relate to the three major components of a theory of learning from instruction, namely a theory of expertise describing skilled performance in a domain, a theory of the acquisition processes required to achieve competence, and a theory of intervention strategies that are appropriate for eliciting those acquisition processes.