Learning happens across three worlds: surface knowledge (facts), deep understanding (connecting ideas), and constructed knowledge (building theories). Each level builds on the previous, but you can't skip surface learning to reach depth.
Paper: Constructivism, Socioculturalism, and Popper's World 3
Philosopher Karl Popper proposed three worlds of reality: the physical world, the mental world of individual thoughts, and the world of objective knowledge and culture. Educator Carl Bereiter applied this to learning and proposed three levels of understanding:
Surface knowledge involves knowing facts and ideas. You recognize information, recall it, and understand basic concepts. This isn't superficial or bad. It's foundational.
Deep understanding requires connecting separate pieces of knowledge and going beyond given information to deduce principles. You integrate what you know into frameworks. You elaborate and make inferences.
Constructed knowledge happens when you build defensible theories based on your surface and deep knowledge. You create new understanding. This level is Popper's "World 3", the realm where knowledge becomes an object that exists independently, can be shared, criticized, and improved.
Balance is critical. Surface knowledge isn't inferior. It's necessary to achieve a deep understanding. Trying to skip to depth without a foundation fails.
The learning journey moves from ideas to understanding to constructing knowledge. Each stage prepares you for the next. Bereiter argued that education should focus less on individual mental states and more on collaborative creation of knowledge objects that live in this third world.
This explains why procedural and declarative knowledge work together in learning.