In college-level courses, the vast majority of students read expository textbooks with a primary purpose in mind: to memorize and, hopefully, understand enough information to receive a particular grade on a course exam. Intuitively, this kind of reading is different than the kind of reading that these same students do when reading a novel while…

Three empirical studies concerning reflective and rote learning in Finnish schools are described. In the first, a questionnaire given to school beginners reveals that during their first 12 weeks of school the children's estimates of the excitement and pleasure of learning and their conception of the role of understanding in learning decrease. The…