The concept of active learning is reminiscent to the Montessori style, isn't it? Either way, I think it the best way to learn for children: without participation and interest in the task, learning is impaired.
When it comes to ecological active learning, I am immediately drawn by the nature of the "ecologies". I would expect significant differences in learning strategies (exhibited information-seeking behaviours) as a function of ecological seeting. For example, in a non-ostensive and "free-play" context, would children manually explore artifacts over natural kinds? Moreover, would this go-to preference for information gathering about kinds change with age?
There is some work on children's fascination with live pets in free play studies, which makes me think: children's learning strategies may be designed to be highly efficient towards the evolutionary most salient ecological features. One such feature is the presence of non-human agents: either as prey, predators, hunting partners or potential/accidental dangers (e.g. spiders, snakes...). Thus, is children's "active learning" behaviour modulated by the categorical type of non-human agents in their ecologies? In other words, what kind of questions (or manual exploration) do children employ when learning about how a dog "works" compared to how a spider "works".
Children, and infants, can be argued to have several "intuitive biological" knowledge. I believe these can be leveraged (togethered with their obsession for a teleological explanation) to drastically improve children's learning about the world once we consider integrating them with active learning modalities.