Guided Discovery Learning

1. Guided Discovery Learning Working as an undercover agent, the teacher makes sure that the students are guided to their discoveries. That discovery made by the students with guidance and support from the teacher is known as guided discovery learning. This becomes clear if we compare with Discovery Learning, which is unguided and Reception Learning, which is over guided.

2. Discovery Learning: An approach, which capitalizes on the child’s natural curiosity and urge to explore the environment. The child learns by personal experience and experiment and this is thought to make memory more vivid and help in the transfer of knowledge to new situations. This method is associated with liberal educationists such as Dewey and Montessori. It has the support of Piaget’s theory, which stresses the importance of the effects of informal experience during childhood.

3. What is Discovery Learning? Students discover knowledge without guidance, developing their own understanding. Children are “Little Scientists”. – Jean Piajet. Can you think of an example from your own experiences? As a young boy/girl, what were some of the simplest things you learned yourself without the help of elders or teachers?

4. Reception Learning: People acquire knowledge primarily through reception rather than through discovery. Concepts, principles, and ideas are presented to them and received by them, not discovered by them. The more organized and focused the presentation, the more thoroughly the person will learn. This is David Ausubel’s view in contrast to Jerome Bruner’s discovery learning. Ausubel believes that learning should progress, not inductively as Bruner recommends, but deductively: from the general to the specific, or from the rule or principle to examples.

5. Limitations: Discovery learning is not appropriate in every situation other than young children. Often children don’t have sufficient time to learn all they need to know by personal discovery. On the other hand as in reception learning, if the teacher presents concepts, principles, and ideas to children, students may not put in much effort and it becomes spoon-feeding. Hence the middle path is guided learning. Teachers should retain the important role in guiding children to their discoveries. Level of guidance should be in accordance with learner’s ability. Some learners need little guidance and some may need more. Teachers should provide right amount of guidance and support depending on an individual’s ability.

6. Steps in Guided Discovery: 1. Present a problem, question, or situation that is interesting or exciting, and provoke student questions. 2. Ask students to define or explain terms, working toward a precise definition of the problem, question, or situation to be studied. 3. Aid students in the formation of specific questions to focus the enquiry and facilitate the collection of data. 4. Guide students toward a variety of sources, including yourself and your students, to provide necessary data. 5. Assist students in checking the data by clarifying statements or judgments about the problem or situation. 6. Support the development of a number of solutions from which choices can be made. 7. Provide opportunity for feedback and revision. Assist in testing the effectiveness of solutions.

7. To each the concept – “the sum of angles of a triangle always equal to 180 degree”, five different approaches are given: 1. Teacher provides triangles and instruments like rulers, compasses, and protractors, and simply allows learners to play with materials giving no specific direction. 2. After providing triangles and instruments like rulers, compasses, and protractors, teacher says – “See if you find any interesting facts about the angles of a triangle”. 3. Teacher gives instruction – “Measure the angles of a triangle and add the result together. Repeat this for a number of triangles and see if can state any conclusion which applies to all the triangles”. 4. Teacher draws number of triangles on the board and asks various students to come forward to measure the angles and perform the requisite addition, and then invite the class to formulate a generalization. 5. Teacher gives generalization and then have various children to confirm it with examples drawn on the board. Which of the above approach are Discovery Learning, Guided Discovery Learning, and Receptive Learning.