Encapsulation is the approach of "hiding" the fields of a class so that they are only accessible through methods of the class (thus controlling what the fields can and cannot be set to)
See - http://www.tutorialspoint.com/java/java_encapsulation.htm
EG: if a class has a size
field, you would make the size field private and then provide a setSize
methods on the class - you can then add validation within the setSize
method to control what the size can and cannot be set to