What is it?
Discovery learning is frequently attributed to Jerome Bruner (1961), who proposed that it is through a process of discovery that learners will develop a sense of ownership over their own learning.
Bruner stated, ‘I do not restrict discovery to the act of finding out something that was unknown to mankind, but rather include all forms of obtaining knowledge for oneself by the use of one’s own mind’. He maintained that prior knowledge of the area provides the basis for the discovery; it does not occur out of nowhere, suggesting the key role of guidance in discovery learning.
Bruner posited that when learners expect or are prepared to ‘find regularities and relationships in [their] environment’, they will ‘devise ways of searching and finding’. He described experiments where prior to testing, subjects were advised that there was a pattern to identify, or that they were expected to relay the knowledge they gained to another person. This suggests subjects were primed to assume a ‘discovery mindset’ for the task. There are great rewards to learning when adopting this perspective.
Discovery, like surprise, favours the well prepared mind. (Bruner, 1961)
Discovery learning has attracted much scrutiny in recent years from education researchers who have argued that it equates to minimal or no teacher guidance, which is ineffective (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich & Tenenbaum, 2011; Hushman & Marley, 2015; Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006; Klahr & Nigam, 2004; Mayer, 2004). In response, researchers have classified and described different discovery learning types, their associated level of teacher guidance, and their effectiveness in fostering learning.
The literature distinguishes between approaches such as guided, assisted, enhanced, and enriched discovery learning as distinct from ‘pure’ discovery learning. Alfieri et al. (2011) stated that pure ‘discovery learning occurs whenever the learner is not provided with the target information or conceptual understanding and must find it independently and with only the provided materials’. Conversely, guided, assisted, or enriched discovery learning occurs when teachers provide a range of support such as hints, direction, and elicited explanations — coaching, feedback, worked examples, and scaffolding.
Guided discovery learning appears to offer learners the best opportunity to adopt a discovery mindset; to expect and be prepared to discover knowledge for themselves, as Bruner described in The Act of Discovery (1961). There is strong evidence, as presented below, to suggest that guided discovery is superior to instructional approaches that are unguided, minimally guided or fully teacher-guided. Alfieri et al. (2011), in their meta-analysis of 164 studies of discovery learning, found the order of positive impact as firstly guided discovery learning, followed by explicit instruction, and lastly, unassisted discovery learning.
How guided discovery carries the five characteristics
Guided discovery learning aligns with the LEGO Foundation’s five characteristics of play in the following ways:
- Meaningful. Meaningful learning is promoted when learners are guided to integrate new information with their existing knowledge base. This active sensemaking of new information is described by Zosh et al. (2017) as when ‘children find meaning in an experience by connecting it with what they already know’.
- Social interaction. Guided discovery learning often relies on social interaction; leveraging the benefits for learners when learning in groups. Hotulainen, Mononen and Aunio (2016) provided enriched discovery learning activities to small groups of Grade 1 children to foster thinking skills.
- Actively engaging. Guided discovery learning is reported to yield higher levels of active learner engagement than direct instruction (Hushman & Marley, 2015). Hushman and Marley (2015) attribute this to the emphasis on particular information through guiding questions, hints, feedback and modelling, as opposed to direct explication of what is required to be known.
- Iterative. Discovery learning is often used to foster scientific skills development, such as designing sound experiments (Hushman & Marley, 2015). This skill, in guided discovery, is based on iteration and trial and error. Incorrect responses are met with prompts and further questioning by teacher facilitators to nudge learners towards understanding.
- Joyful. Hushman and Marley (2015) found that children who had received guided discovery instruction demonstrated greater achievement and reported greater positive changes in science self-efficacy than those who had received direct or minimal instruction. Self-efficacy is associated with interest, motivation, and enjoyment of learning.
Evidence of impact
A sample of skills and knowledge gained though guided discovery learning includes:
Durable science skills. Dean and Kuhn’s (2007) study of discovery learning compared the ability of US fourth grade learners to design sound experiments when receiving direct instruction, direct instruction plus practice, and practice only. They found that learning gains made via direct instruction without the opportunity to practice were not sustained beyond 12 weeks post instruction. Alternatively, learners in the two practice conditions, who spent greater time on task, made significant and lasting learning gains over a four-month period.
Mathematics learning and transfer. Gagne and Brown (1961) found that grade nine and ten learners in the US, learning under guided discovery learning conditions, outperformed learners in pure discovery and direct instruction learning conditions when solving mathematical computations and problems. Purpura, Baroody, Eiland and Reid (2016) found similarly, in the US, that well-structured highly guided instruction featuring explicit questions was more effective than minimally guided instruction in fostering first graders’ reasoning strategies about basic sums. For basic sums, ‘guided-discovery learning has unique beneficial effects on achieving transfer to novel problems’.
Thinking skills and academic achievement for low performers. Hotulainen, Mononen, and Aunio (2016) compared the impact of a guided discovery thinking skills intervention on low and high performing first grade children in Finland. The intervention was delivered over eight weeks and each lesson followed the same sequence: orientation – seeking children’s prior knowledge on the topic; problem – the main activity of the lesson; and reflection – discussing what was challenging about the activity and how these challenges were overcome. The intervention led to the improvement of thinking, mathematics, listening comprehension and reading fluency skills in low achieving first grade learners. The intervention closed the gap between high and low performing students, as revealed by post-test results. The study design attempted to address concerns raised by Fuchs and Fuchs (2008) that children with special learning needs require strong lesson framing and scaffolding to succeed in discovery learning settings.
Enabling factors
- Informed judgement about how much guidance to give. Teachers using guided discovery methods need to make informed judgements about the type and quantity of guidance to provide their learners, and how to specify the intended outcome of learning. In some instances, direct instruction provides the optimal conditions for cognitive processing, but in others, a mix of guidance and exploration is required (Mayer, 2004).
- Time on task, at a cost to coverage. Dean and Kuhn’s (2007) study investigated the depth and durability of learner knowledge gains with practice, rather than the speed of knowledge gain. Learners who demonstrated competency well after instruction spent more time on task. This has implications for curricula and scheduling; if it takes time to foster deep learning there will be a cost to content coverage.
- Preparing the mind, not abandoning the child. Teachers must view effective guided discovery methods as those which activate and prepare the mind to make a discovery, rather than those which abandon the child to discover purely on their own.
- Structure, sequence, and the skill of the teacher. The results of Hotulainen, Mononen and Aunio’s (2016) study hinge partly on the structure and sequence of the intervention, and the skills of the teacher delivering the program. The thinking skill intervention supported previously low performing learners to demonstrate ‘remarkable improvements’ across many measures. However, the authors suggested that the quality of instructional design and delivery might have positively influenced children’s learning habits and motivation.