How do children learn?

I've been trying to make a start on a page on my new website that considers and discusses how children learn since this seems as important as asking what education is for.  On looking at a blank page I realised the enormity of the task ahead of me.  So much has been written on the subject and whilst I could begin with a summary of the various popular learning theories in psychology such as Piaget and Vygotksy this would not be enough since there are so many additional theories to consider.  So, I avoided the task by doing some web surfing!!  Whilst doing this I came across Sandra Dodd's website which, on her page about unschooling, starts with the words "People learn by...".  And this is when something really important occurred to me.

It seems that we consider children as almost like a different species to adults, and in that respect what we neglect to remember in discussions such as 'How do children learn?' is that children are people.  So, perhaps the question we should be asking is not how children learn but how people learn.  But here are some other questions this brought to mind:

a) are we concerned more with how children learn because they are 'untainted' by socialised methods of learning that adults have been subject to, and;
b) why do we want to know how children learn?  Is it to help them learn better or more or is to make the best use of how they learn in order for us to teach them what we want them to learn?

It would seem that to truly understand how children learn without being 'tainted' by specific methods of teaching or directing learning that we would need to leave a child to their own devices, but would this be ethical and could we truly leave them to learn fully autonomously without any adult intervention?

So, what influence then do adults have in children's learning and how does this influence affect the way they learn?  This is not an easy question to answer since we could look to children's learning before they attend any formal learning context but this would not tell us any more about adult influence on learning because adults influence children's learning in informal contexts.  They provide the stimulus, the situations, the contexts, the support, the encouragement or not, etc etc etc.

Perhaps the question 'How do children learn?' is not so much a methodological problem but an ethical one.  Learning occurs through many means some of which are not always pleasant.  The question, in relation to considering what 'suitable education' is, seems to be more about optimal learning, valuable learning, easier less painful learning etc etc.  So it seems, that in terms of suitable education, the discussion has gone beyond 'how do children learn?' to 'what is the most suitable way for children to learn?' and this brings up a set of additional issues and concepts to consider.

Suitable education and perceptions of childhood

Is a definition of suitable education linked to how children and what constitutes childhood are percieved?

Initial thoughts...

I've been reading quite a bit about children's rights and children's citizenship recently and an interesting argument that I have come accross is that there appears to be a prevailing view of children as citizens in waiting.  This view, it is suggested, is borne from a dominant developmental psychology perspective of children as adults in the making and therefore their experiences and perceptions are constantly considered as rooted in and related to their future and their future potential rather than who they are and what they are experiencing in the present.  Because of this view of children as citizens in waiting, consultation with children and their participation in decision making is limited based upon their perceived lack of maturity as well as the desire to protect them from making potentially disasterous decisions due to lack of experience.

The problem is how to balance the legitimate concerns to protect children with the inclusion of children as citizens with the right to agency.