Discovery and its Role in Learning

Dr. Wendy Ghiora – Posting #28 – September 12, 2009

TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America ...
MARIA: Here it is.
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America?
CLASS: Maria.

Yes children, your answer is definitely correct. Or was it the wrong question?
This got me wondering, “Just how important it is to help children ask the right questions?”

Did you know there actually is a pedagogical form of teaching based on discovery? And discovery is all about questioning. It’s called Discovery Learning. Discovery Learning is a method of inquiry-based instruction; discovery learning believes that it is best for learners to discover facts and relationships for themselves.

Students interact with the world by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments. As a result, students may be able to remember concepts and knowledge discovered on their own (in contrast to a transmissionist model). Models that are based upon the discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, incidental learning, among others.
The results of discovery learning are consistent with what we already know about best teaching practices. Proponents of this theory believe that discovery learning has many advantages, including:

· encourages active engagement
· promotes motivation
· promotes autonomy, responsibility, independence
· the development of creativity and problem solving skills.
· a tailored learning experience

Each one of the above positive learning attributes naturally draws a child toward the desire to discover more through the process of questioning. The theory of discovery learning is based on people understanding and remembering concepts better when they have asked the right questions and discovered the solutions on their own. Discovery learning includes activities such as experimentation, data interpretation, interviews, and dissection. Here are some specific examples of various learning scenarios using discovery learning:

1.-Experimentation: Students may learn through experimentation how the position of the fulcrum affects the force necessary to raise a given object using a lever.
2.-Data interpretation: Examining family trees showing which members have a disease will allow students to determine whether the allele causing the disease is recessive, dominant, or sex-linked.
3.-Interviews: Students can learn about integration by interviewing people in their community who remember when the schools were segregated.
4.-Dissection: Dissecting small branches will show students that only the green cambium layer of a tree is living and active in water and nutrient transport.

These examples use trial and error, compare and contrast, data collection/ interpretation and a myriad of the best in questioning practices bar none. Through such learning practices, children “discover” how to construct the best questioning techniques in order to yield the best information.

Finally, here is a true and very dramatic example of discovery learning:

A man in India put a computer with Internet access in a wall next to an alley so that poor children could use it. They developed quite a fluency in its use. The man nudged them once, showing them that the computer could play music, too.

But for classroom purposes, I was also interested in another little experiment he did with classroom students. The part quoted from the article is in italics below:
Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, "What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?" He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, "Look here guys. I have a little problem for you." They read the questions and said they didn't understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, "Here's a terminal. I'll give you two hours to find the answers."
Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.
They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn't mean much. But I said to him, "Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject." So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, "They don't know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn't know."

This shows you what the Internet and children asking the right questions are capable of. The slum children don't have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what's important. What is important is infrastructure and access ... The teacher's job is very simple. It's to help the children ask the right questions.

Are you ready for a journey of discovery? How can we spark that curiosity in children? What lessons can be provided to afford children the opportunity to question, discover and learn? Please send me your ideas on how to help children ask the right questions. We’ll discover the answers together in next week’s blog posting.