Heuristic education is based on discovering and experiencing things for yourself. As the English would say: Teach learners fishing instead of giving them fish. How is it possible to apply heuristic learning in classroom situations instead of spoon-feeding the learners?
Start by getting the learners to list the skills required for "fishing". But wait -
They will not be interested in fishing unless they want fish. But wait -
They will not be interested in fish unless they are good to eat. But wait -
They may find that they need to cook the fish. But wait - Wait till they are hungry for fish.
Where does hunger to learn come from?
First you better show them a selection of hooks.
The hooks I mean are those question mark hooks. They will need them for everything.
What? When? Where? How? Why? Who?
What are the best kinds of fish?
When is the best time to……
But wait, - you must not give them these questions!
The learners are the ones who must ask the questions. There is no better way to learn.
Show that you value their questions so that the learners will have confidence to ask. Then real fishing will happen.
The learners must be made to understand that simply memorizing the reading materials is not going to help. Not just classroom matters, in everything else, practice is important.
For example, memorizing the theory of swimming is not sufficient to be a swimmer!
Start by getting the learners to list the skills required for "fishing". But wait -
They will not be interested in fishing unless they want fish. But wait -
They will not be interested in fish unless they are good to eat. But wait -
They may find that they need to cook the fish. But wait - Wait till they are hungry for fish.
Where does hunger to learn come from?
First you better show them a selection of hooks.
The hooks I mean are those question mark hooks. They will need them for everything.
What? When? Where? How? Why? Who?
What are the best kinds of fish?
When is the best time to……
But wait, - you must not give them these questions!
The learners are the ones who must ask the questions. There is no better way to learn.
Show that you value their questions so that the learners will have confidence to ask. Then real fishing will happen.
The answer to this is more complex than it might seem at first. There is nothing more precious to teachers than the "Aha!" moment when students understand something; and there is no doubt that discovery learning is both exciting and engaging, but student discoverers need guidance. As Vygotsky reminds us, the younger, or less experienced the learner, the more guidance they need.
As I used to tell my student teachers, you have to set up the discovery process very carefully. You beging by giving them some basic knowledge so that they know what to look for and how to recognise it when they find it, then you lay a carefuel trail of clues. Without that type of support, you can get very strange results indeed. A friend and I were having coffee some years ago. Our children who were then in the last year of elementary school and first year of high school weere with us. My friend asked them to explain why condensation had formed on the glass drink bottle on the table. They conferred, and offered an explanation that seemed logical. My friend listened, praised them for expressing their ideas clearly, and them told them they were absolutely wrong.
In a similar example at tertiary level, I asked my first year students to find and comment on an education policy written by our state government. One student turned in a report on a US federal government policy, quite unaware that she had been looking in the wrong place. The next time I set that assignment, I gave my students the relevant URLs.
Discovery learning can be joyful, but it is very time consuming & can be labour intensive. It's a very important part of a teacher's repertoire, but it doesn't take the place of direct instruction.
And at the risk of being pedantic, the quote about giving a man a fish, or teaching how to fish comes form Moses Maimonides (a.k.a. Moshe ben Maimon or Musa ibn Maymun) a C13, Sephardic philosopher.
Let me ask a sophisticated question: How we ask students to study facts and concepts as it is and recall it while the scientists discover such facts, concepts and theories throughout several experiments and steps that take sometimes months and years?
In fact, there is a significant relationship between using new IT in education and discovery learning. Rather like the way the Hubble Space Telescope has made a significant contribution to astronomy in enabling astronomers to discover hidden structures and properties of our distant universe, learning software has allowed concepts, facts and theories to become viewable and tangible in mathematics, physics ... etc.
Although benefiting from the facilities of educational technology might stimulate students' motivations to start the journey of discovery with the guessing reaction that mentioned by Vygotsky (so- called Aha-reaction), Vygotsky indicated this “aha” reaction does not mean that they have discovered or deduce the new knowledge or new relations in that form of a sudden insight. However, such a simple psychological operation could be operationalizing as the first step on the way of making conjectures and then justifying conclusions "e.g. in mathematics". In addition, through using learning software such as dynamic geometry in mathematics classrooms, the students can test whether their constructions work in general or whether they have discovered a special case (Giamatti, C., 1995, p. 450).
This answer from my Ph.D.
all the best.
Madeleine makes an interesting point about the need for guidance with discovery learning. I agree only to the extent that the solution sought is single valued and convergent in nature. In many cases that is not true so that even if the answer is not immediately apparent, the journey of expereintial learning has started and that may provide a whole series of useful insights and different perspectives on what is being investigated. Some of our most interesting learning arises from the unexpected.
It seems that you are asking about the Socratic Method of teaching. I use it all the time.
I have resisted responding to this qustion because of concerns I have with 'discovery' learing with older students. Personally, I think that the younger the student, the more discovery learning can be used. Otherise it has a place in very specific contexts, or as part of suite if strategies. What eventually prompted my involvement, albet limited, was the realisation for me that the aforementioned 'aha' moment also applied in direct teachin methods. I remember vividly think 'oh yeah. That's right' many times when some one simply told me tha answer to something I wanted to know. I didn't need to discovr the answer, I was very happy to discover how the supplied answer fitted into my existing schema. Maybe true discovery learning is not what everyone wants? Perhaps it is a personal learning style? I hate trying to solve puzzles but get great joy in seeing how they an be solved and learning from it. Perhaps it isn't so much a general strategy, as another string to the bow of good teachers to use wisely.
As a Systems Thinker, I wish the direction of elementary, middle, and high school education was going in the direction of heuristic or discovery learning. The current direction in the United States might ensure that any creativity on the part of students and teachers is no longer a part of learning.
http://relatingresearchtopractice.org/article/234
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