ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about learners, teachers, psychologists. It considers different ways in which the practices of teaching and the work of researchers and experimental psychologists can complement each other. Experimental psychologists and teachers investigating or encouraging learning very frequently guide the learners in their efforts to solve their learning problems. In some circumstances they do not do so; experimenters if they are intent on studying activity ethnologically rather than under experimental control, teachers if they subscribe unreservedly to the doctrine of discovery learning. When guidance is given, it commonly takes the form of what might be described as the careful arrangement of rewards. The lessons for students of psychopedagogy in the stories of Victor and Washoe are that a social environment is a prerequisite for becoming human, and that the ability to converse using a systematic symbol system, preferably, but not essentially, spoken, is crucial if complex learning involving abstract thinking is to take place.
