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"Discovery Learning" is wonderful
February 03, 2004The discovery learning method is a way for teachers to allow the child to discover things for himself or herself, because when a child makes the discovery, the learning is much deeper and more likely to be remembered. That spark of "Eureka" or "I have found it!" is what kindles the true flame of learning.
Actually, we don't disagree, it's just we have a better proposal: Teach! Students will learn a lot more in less time.
Just so there's no misunderstanding, we fully support the responsible use of guided discovery in the classroom. Master teachers have known this for years.
What we don't support is the abandonment of direct instruction, especially for some key concepts and techniques which must be taught.
For example, in the University of Chicago's Everyday Math program, they don't recommend teaching children the long division algorithm, saying "let the children discover a division algorithm for themselves." (The program also embraces calculator use starting with Kindergarten, so we bet we know which "algorithm" the kids would pick!)
We were fully grown before we understood completely how the long division algorithm works, so we'd place the chances at our discovering it in childhood, oh, at about zero.
A good example in the real world of science is measuring the circumference of the Earth.
Eratosthenes in 230 B.C. was not the first mathemetician in the history of the world, yet he was the first to discover how you could find the circumference of the earth by measuring the angle of a shadow and the distance to another city.
Mathematics, at the time of Eratosthenes, was over a millenia old. Yet of all the geniuses that went before him, none was smart enough to discover that on noon of the the summer solstice the shadow's angle represented degrees of latitude from the Tropic of Cancer, enabling him to quickly calculate the Earth's circumference.
Thus Eratosthenes was able to use his mathematical and scientific knowledge to discover a new technique, and those who came after him were able to use his work as a starting point for theirs.
Fast forward to a classroom of today. Proponents of discovery learning and constructivism say we should allow our children to discover things for themselves, so that the meaning is much deeper for them. Um, isn't "discovering things for themselves" what they do on Saturday and Sunday? Doesn't reinventing the wheel rank among the world's worst ideas?
Aren't we supposed to teach children academic knowledge and skills, because we are more knowledgable and skilled than they are, and we want them to grow intellectually? Aren't we trying to prepare them for something? Like higher education and a rich choice of professions? Remember, a key reason why we teach is to open doors for our kids.
Yet we're supposed to stand by benignly as adolescents hopefully discover in a few class periods what has taken a thousand years of mathematical advancements to develop.
Regarding discovery learning, William Bennett writes in The Educated Child: The ardor for this approach is fueled by a deep conviction that learning flourishes best when children are allowed to make their own sense out of the world, unhampered by the straitjacket of externally dictated rules and formulas imposed by adults.
One of the wonderful aspects of civilization is that it always advances (with minor setbacks such as the destruction of the library at Alexandria in 642 A.D. by the Caliph of Baghdad). The knowledge of one generation becomes the starting point of the next.
In a recent University of Arizona commencement address, Paul S. Sypherd said:
The great physicist Isaac Newton was born 360 years ago, and during his lifetime he transformed the understanding of the universe and the forces that govern it. Newton's laws of motion stand today.Good thing Newton didn't have teachers enamored with the discovery learning method, or he would have been relegated to standing next to the aforementioned giants.
Late in his life he was asked how he was able to accomplish such great things. He replied: "[If I have seen further, it is because] I stood on the shoulders of giants."
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Letting kids discover on their own is tantamount to leaving a math class (for example) alone for a week or two, then coming back in and asking, "OK, anyone figure out how to take square roots?"
For long multiplication, a few will probably hit on "Russian Peasant multiplication". One or two students per year will probably hit on the traditional way (remember little Karl Gauss figuring out how to find the sum of the numbers 1 to 100?), but for all but the brightest, you need a teacher as a guide.
The guide can take several approaches: 1) Here's how you do it; write this here, that there, multiply these in this order..... 2) Try this... what happens when you do this... How could we get from here to there? Different kids will flourish under different approaches.
I suppose if teachers want to give up the difficult and demanding job of education (="leading out"), we won't have to require as much in the way of competence.
Mike February 4, 2004 02:47 PMThe best teachers teach, but also seize moments where the process of guided discovery can be used (followed immediately with a recap lesson solidifying the concept using direct instruction).
A few examples from geometry: given the area of a square 1 unit long is "1 square unit" you can derive the formula for a square or a rectangle: A=LxW, then snip off a triangle from one side and glue it on the other and you get a parallelogram: A=BxH, then cut this parallelogram in half (by cutting corner to corner) to get a triangle: A=(1/2)BxH.
And with a little work and a little algebra, you can even derive the formula for a trapezoid A=((B1+B2)/2)xH.
With "guided discovery" kids can have a blast "discovering" these formulas. After which the teacher teaches the formulas, which by this time should make perfect sense.
chett February 4, 2004 04:52 PMI can only speak for science education in New York City where I work, but I doubt that we are that unique.
First off, there are precious few teachers who practice the most extreme form of "discovery learning" or what is commonly referred to as "inquiry." This is probably a good thing, but there are some students (and mostly in the lower/elementary grades I would argue) who might actually flourish with such an approach so I will not universally reject it. My experience has been that very few teachers even practice a modified form of "guided" inquiry, which I believe has a lot of merit. No one is telling students to go out and discover the laws of physics on their own without help from the teacher. Instead, guided inquiry done properly involves carefully prepared problems that "guide" students - through questioning and challenging - to certain fundamental concepts in science, and usually address one or more misconceptions (or to put it in politically correct terms, “alternative conceptions”).
For example, I could simply tell students that an object in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line at a constant speed unless a net force acts on it and explain it and give examples and put it in the context of the other laws of motion, but how many students can grasp this concept (or believe it) without actually working with materials and grappling with their misconceptions? Earthly experience argues partly against Newton's first law, and guided inquiry is probably the best way to address the problem.
I would disagree with you that this is the way that science is traditionally taught: That “master teachers have known this for years” is not evident in my experience (as a teacher or as a student) unless you mean the master teachers who have been advocating inquiry in its various forms for the past 15 - 20 or so years and facing great opposition in the process.
The reality is that many teachers are still teaching a curriculum (in most cases mandated by the state) that is “a mile wide and an inch deep” where there is scarcely time for any kind of discovery learning and instead information is crammed into students, memorized, regurgitated, and quickly forgotten, leaving little impression on students except that science is boring AND difficult.
Good reading
Alison April 11, 2004 09:45 PM