The theory behind learner-centered education is that "Learner-centered education targets instructional strategies that elicit and build upon students' interests and skills. It is based on the belief and observations that we all learn most effectively when we are designing or creating things in which we have a substantial measure of control over our own explorations." This work is not new. The educational field has seen this line of thinking in works of John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget.
The central focus of Dewey's philosophical interests throughout his career was what has been traditionally called "epistemology," or the "theory of knowledge."
Piaget's research in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology had one unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood.