schemata theory

Schema Theory is a theory of learning. Schemata are models suggesting relationships between objects. They are learned and structure future learning. (Schemata is the plural and schema is the singular form of this word.) The theory hypothesizes that the schema a person uses during learning will determine how the learner interprets the task to be learned, how the learner understands the information, and what knowledge the learner acquires.Plato elaborates the Greek doctrine of ideal types – such as the perfect circle that exists in the mind but which no one has ever seen. Kant further developed the notion and introduced the word schema. For example, he describes the "dog" schema a mental pattern which "can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in a general manner, without limitation to any single determinate figure as experience, or any possible image that I can represent in concreto." (Kant 1781).
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