Bonnie Shapiro clarifies the historical development of constructivism, and employs a constructivist approach in her own methodology. To construct new ideas means to take action based on beliefs about what one is doing when one is learning science. Learning is understood not only as a cognitive experience, but also as one that derives from the emotional, personal, social, cultural, and preconceptual. These often neglected dimensions, which permeate all subject matter learning, are given high status in What Children Bring to Light. Six case studies, each emphasizing a very different reception of one teacher's inroduction of the topic, light, form the core of the book. Shapiro not only analyzes this core in the book's third part, but shares the thinking that lies behind the research and data collection.

"Not only is this book valuable reading for the practitioner, but it is also a model of how curriclum learning theory research can be communicated in an interesting yet scholarly way."

—The Science Teacher