Skill as an Aspect of Knowledge

What makes some people better than others at learning things? If you ask this question you will probably get the answer that it has to do with intelligence (some people are cleverer, more gifted, better equipped). Those who answer in this way seem to be satisfied with this explanation, and if you ask them, as a follow-up, what it means to be intelligent (clever, gifted, intellectually well-equipped), they might very well answer that it means that one is good at learning things. Dissatisfaction with this type of explanation' -which is, unfortunately, not so rare in the field of behavioral science-was the starting point of a project concerning higher education, which our research group initiated in the beginning of the 1970s.1 We were quite simply interested in what difference there is in how a learning task is approached between those who are successful and those who are less successful. Do they tackle the task in different ways, and if so how can these different ways be described? The question would, of course, be quite impossible if it concerned learning in general (i.e., all types of learning). Our starting point was an