Intended as a chapter in "Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology," this paper provides an overview and interpretation of the work already completed on children's learning, remembering, and understanding with a major concentration on academic cognition. The first part of the paper provides a brief overview of the principal trends of the 1970s and a statement of the advances in the understanding of children's learning that were made during that period. A second section contains a selected review of the literature that highlights the interactive nature of learning. The literature is organized within a framework referred to as the tetrahedral model through which the activities and characteristics of learners in response to variations in criterial tasks and stimulus materials are considered. A third section examines some of the controversies surrounding metacognition and other concepts such as executive control and self-regulation, while the final section concentrates on intervention research and the importance of considering instructional effects when formulating basic developmental theory. (HOD)