LEARNING STYLES:

TOPIC 6
DISCOVERY LEARNING
WHAT IS DISCOVERY LEARNING?

► Discovery or inquiry learning refers to learning that takes place when

students are asked to find or figure out something for themselves (Bruner).

To get learners to think for themselves

Purpose To help learners discover how knowledge is

formulated

To promote higher-order thinking skills

Teacher set the stage for knowledge discovery

Teacher rewards exploration and independent thought

Learners accept the challenge of finding out things for themselves

Characteristics – discovering knowledge

Learners’ participation and interaction are high

Learners operate at higher-order cognitive levels

1
PURPOSE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF DISCOVERY LEARNING

Teachers use discovery learning to accomplish three educational purposes:

► First, they want learners to know how to think and find things out for
themselves.
► Second, users of discovery learning want learners to see for themselves how
knowledge is obtained.
► Third, these teachers want learners to use their higher-order thinking skills.

Prepared by: RMA,2019 2

Prepared by: RMA,2019
ADVANTAGES OF DISCOVERY LEARNING

► Active engagement
► Promotes motivation
► Promotes ownership of learning
► The development of creativity and problem solving skills
► A tailored learning experience

Prepared by: RMA,2019 4

CRITICISMS OF DISCOVERY LEARNING

► Too much information (cognitive overload)

► Often requires vast resources unavailable in traditional classroom.
► Lack of teacher control
► Potential misconceptions
► Teachers may fail to recognise misconceptions

Prepared by: RMA,2019 5

EXAMPLES OF DISCOVERY LEARNING

Learning with and through narratives

✓ Story telling in its most basic form is a means by which a culture passes onto
the next generation what they have found to be useful, to be of value, or
to be good.
✓ Curriculum can be understood as a certain way of telling a story about the
world.
✓ Story telling has undergone changes of form across time but its purpose
and message is still the same: this is what we have found to be useful, to be
of value, to be true.
✓ Regardless of whether it takes the form of story, script or the medium of
monologue, books, magazines, theatre, television, movies or internet;
everyone connects with narrative

Prepared by: RMA,2019 6

Prepared by: RMA,2019
Prepared by: RMA,2019
Case-Based Learning

Case-Based Learning is often defined as a teaching method which requires students to

actively participate in real or hypothetical problem situations, reflecting the kinds of
expeiences naturally encountered in the discipline under study
(Ertmer and Russell, 1995)

Prepared by: RMA,2019 9

✓ Case studies are stories that are used as a teaching tool to show the
application of a theory or concept to real situations.
✓ Dependent on the goal they are meant to fulfil, cases can be fact-driven
and deductive where there is a correct answer, or they can be context
driven where multiple solutions are possible.
✓ Various disciplines have employed case studies, including humanities,
social sciences, sciences, engineering, law, business, and medicine.
✓ Good cases generally have the following features: they tell a good story,
are recent, include dialogue, create empathy with the main characters,
are relevant to the reader, serve a teaching function, require a dilemma to
be solved, and have generality.

Prepared by: RMA,2019 10

✓ How to use cases for teaching and learning:
• Instructors can create their own cases or can find cases that already
exist. The following are some things to keep in mind when creating a
case:
• What do you want students to learn from the discussion of the case?
• What do they already know that applies to the case?
• What are the issues that may be raised in discussion?
• How will the case and discussion be introduced?
• What preparation is expected of students? (Do they need to read the
case ahead of time? Do research? Write anything?)

Prepared by: RMA,2019 11

Prepared by: RMA,2019
Guided discovery

✓ Refers to a teaching and learning environment where students are actively

participating in discovering knowledge.
✓ The goal of discovery is to facilitate deep learning on the part of the
students – learning that has its basis in fundamental understanding and
often arises from viewing a problem from multiple perspectives.
✓ The pedagogical underpinning is that if the students discover the
knowledge, they will, in the process, have created and added to their own
scaffolded understanding.
✓ They will have formulated and evaluated hypotheses, rejected those that
don’t seem to explain observations, confronted misconceptions,
encountered surprises and finally come to an understanding that comports
with experiment.
✓ By re-creating knowledge which already exists but is heretofore unknown to
them, students will progress in learning how to create new knowledge, and
they will have training in inductive reasoning – the method used to create
most human knowledge
Prepared by: RMA,2019 13
Prepared by: RMA,2019
Prepared by: RMA,2019
Simulation-based learning

✓ A simulation can be defined as a model of reality reflecting some or all of

its properties.
✓ Robert Gagne identified the following properties of a simulation as crucial:
– A simulation represents a real situation in which operations are carried
out.
– A simulation provides the user with certain controls over the problem or
situation.
– A simulation omits certain distracting variables irrelevant or unimportant
for the particular instructional goals. Simulation = (Reality) - (Task
irrelevant elements)

Prepared by: RMA,2019 16

Prepared by: RMA,2019
Incidental learning

✓ Incidental learning refers to any learning that is unplanned or unintended.

✓ It develops while engaging in a task or activity and may also arise as a by-
product of planned learning.

Prepared by: RMA,2019 18

Prepared by: RMA,2019
THANK YOU

u n i t a r.my
Prepared by: RMA,2019