ABSTRACT
A theory of structural learning is to give a description of subprocesses involved in the learning of structured materials. The experiments provide some preliminary information relevant to this kind of analysis for two cases of structural learning. The first study dealt with junior high school students learning to solve story problems about motion and speed. The second experiment dealt with college undergraduates learning about elementary statistics. These studies involve exploration of three possible factors in learning how to solve the kinds of problem that the authors used in the experiments. One factor is understanding of the abstract mathematical concepts involved in the problems. A second factor involves techniques of applying the mathematical ideas in specific problem contexts. The idea of the experimental design is to permit inferences about the kinds of cognitive structures involved in learning how to solve the problems.
