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Setting A Baby Into The Grass: A Biological Model Of Interactions Between Concrete And Abstract Learning Experiences, Stephen Temple

Proceedings of the 18th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student

Give a baby its first experience in a grassy lawn and it will roll and frolic in the grass, reveling in its presence against its skin, in its hand. Its fingers will fondle and finesse the blades, press into the mass of roots, break and tear. Learning takes place literally at the fingertips, in the direct experience of the feel of each blade. New connections to the physicality of the world are formed and, in so doing, corresponding new representations of that world are created. Each new contact with the world becomes then an experiment, a test of these representations …