Intentional Learning as a Goal of Instruction

Abstract

Contemporary cognitive psychology has only recently begun to make contact with an important set of everyday intuitions about learning. These intuitions have to do with the role of intentions, plans, and mental effort in learning. It is not that intentions, plans, and mental effort have been ignored in accounts of cognitive behavior-quite the contrary (see, for instance, Dennett, 1983, on intentions; Sacerdoti, 1977, on plans; Kahneman, 1973, on mental effort). But we have yet to do justice to what folk psychology treats as their role in learning itself.