Her realization that children's learning difficulties often stem from an inability to use metacognitive strategies such as summarizing led to profound advances in educational psychology theory and teaching practices.
Just before entering the University of London, she saw a documentary about how animals learn in their natural environments and decided to major in psychology.
Brown received a PhD in psychology from the University of London for research on "Anxiety and Complex Learning Performance in Children."
[1] Brown was also instrumental in the development of the method of reciprocal teaching, in which teachers and students take turns leading structured discussions of text.
Fostering Community of Learners (FCL) was a program launched by Brown along with her husband Joseph Campione at the University of California, Berkeley.
According to Brown and Campione, discovery learning that was unguided could potentially be dangerous, while didactic study led to passive learners.
The project also utilized reciprocal teaching, which allowed students to study and share their expertise with a group and discuss material they have prepared themselves.
Research conducted in a laboratory allowed a better understanding of the developmental patterns demonstrated by children and in turn gave rise to classroom observations in which hypotheses could be systematically explore in relatively controlled environments.