Open Education is founded on the work of John Dewey and Jean Piaget. Their work supports the belief that children have a fundamental desire to learn, that learning is constructed from experience, and that children have the capacity to conduct their own inquiries.

 

Open education recognizes that children learn by asking questions, investigating answers, and revising hypotheses in a continuous process of building understanding.  Activities are structured to provide hands-on experiences that allow children to construct knowledge, individually and in small groups, at their own rate of learning.  By learning to make decisions about how to work productively and to set goals for that work, students are both cognitively and emotionally engaged in their learning.