Studies on educational processes and their practice are increasingly focused on learning. What can be learned, how it is learned and why it is learned are questions that are becoming increasingly relevant as the possible answers to them can contribute decisively to the improvement of educational quality. The central consideration that frames this research is that cognitive processes and metacognition are dimensions of learning and that the knowledge of their biological substrate will guide research in this field so important for science teaching. The age of knowledge and learning presents impressive challenges to education and didactic innovation, exposing the uneven distribution of cognitive resources in the world. Society as a whole needs lifelong education and citizens prepared for constant learning (Tunerman, 1990). These new challenges and roles of culture on learning (Delors, 1996) have to materialize in four fundamental pillars: learning to learn and to know, combining a general culture with a particular one; learn to do, influencing the formation of competencies to work and transform society; learn to live together respecting others; and learn to be developing personality and autonomy. The relations of science didactics with cognitive sciences, especially with cognitive psychology, mark successive stages of consolidation of this discipline. Currently, learning is seen as an object of study insofar as it is an activity of scientific knowledge management in the classroom. Didactic and psychological models are distinguishable from each other by their theoretical and practical interests, and by the attention they pay to specific content. Furthermore, attention to learning has allowed science didactics to connect to, and in many cases merge with, studies of a cognitive nature (neuroscience, artificial intelligence, expert systems theory).