Discovery learning, inquiry learning, problem-based learning, experiential learning, and constructivist learning are all fairly synonymous terms that advocate minimal guidance in the learning process. These approaches assume that learners construct their own solutions to ‘authentic’ problems and that this the most effective learning experience. Unfortunately, this perspective has attracted a large following and is reflected in curricula like “Investigations”, but it ignores what we know about the structure of human cognitive architecture of working memory, long-term memory and problem-solving schemas.
According to Kirschner, Swell & Clark (2006), “The past half-century of empirical research on this issue has provided overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that minimal guidance during instruction is significantly less effective and efficient than guidance specifically designed to support the cognitive processing necessary for learning” (p. 76)
Instead, controlled experiments indicate that when students are faced with new information, they should be explicitly shown: 1) what to do, and 2) how to do it. This guided approach has shown that students “learn more deeply from strongly guided learning than from discovery” (p. 79).
Moreover, “lower aptitude students who choose or were assigned to unguided, weaker instructional treatments receive significantly lower scores on posttest than on pretest measures…[and] the failure to provide strong learning support for less experienced or less able students could actually produce a measurable loss of learning” (p. 81). Sadly, less able learners who select unguided courses tend to like the experience even though they learn less from it.
To read the original article “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential and Inquiry-Based Teaching” from the journal Educational Psychologist (vol. 41, pp. 78-86), click here:
kirschner_Sweller_Clark (2006) failure of constructivist teaching
