近幾年來，不論是臺灣或是西方歐美國家的幼兒教育都深受開放教育思潮的影響。本文旨在比較傳統幼兒教育及開放幼兒教育在教學特色、教養型態及學習理論上各有哪些不同的主張。此外，研究者也探討了傳統幼兒教育與開放幼兒教育的不同學習理論，包括吸收論、建構論及社會建構論。最後，研究者從一份實徵研究中，比較兩家分別以傳統教學及開放教學為導向的幼兒園，進一步解析在傳統幼教與開放幼教下所營造出不一樣的學習經驗，及它們對兒童不同能力的啟發及學習態度的養成。

During the past few years open education has great impact on Taiwanese early childhood education as well as the western countries. The main purpose of this article is to compare the difference between traditional early childhood education and open childhood education, such as the learning theory, teaching characteristics and raising pattern of the children. The author also compares the various learning theories such as Stimulus-Response theory, Constructivism theory and Social-Constructivism theory. In the end, an empirical study which compares a traditional preschool and open preschool is presented in this article. The finding of this study indicates that the open preschool and traditional preschool provides different learning experience and encourage different cognitive development of the children.