Discovery learning is a 'luxury belief'

Exploration-first math teaching has left too many students confused and frustrated, writes Danielle Hankins, an educational psychologist, in Education Week. Drawing on cognitive science, the growing “science of math” movement argues that "reasoning, problem-solving, and mathematical flexibility depend on knowledge that must first be explicitly and systematically developed."

Teachers have been taught that "students learn best by figuring things out on their own," she writes. Many math programs delay explicit instruction, making exploration and structured discussion the first step. However, students are often "expected to struggle with new ideas before they had been taught the underlying concepts."

"Research in cognitive science has consistently shown that novice learners do not learn efficiently through minimally guided problem-solving," Hankins writes.

Discovery learning in all subjects overwhelmingly favors children who "already know what to look for," writes Carl Hendrick on The Learning Dispatch. To "successfully 'discover' a principle in science, or intuit a pattern in mathematics, or develop sophisticated comprehension strategies in reading," a child needs prior knowledge and a rich vocabulary.

The child of professionals may develop the language, knowledge and habit of discussion that will enable her to "discover" things that she already half-knows. "By the time she encounters photosynthesis in a discovery-based science lesson," she can draw on nature programs, "a conversation about why leaves change colour, the time she asked why plants need sunlight and her father actually explained it" and so on.

(I grew up in exactly this sort of family, though my parents were stronger on literature, history, civics, politics and economics than science. I remember my father analyzing Mark Antony's "Brutus is an honorable man" speech from Julius Caesar when I was in elementary school.)

"Now consider her classmate," Hendrick writes. "His parents work multiple jobs; there’s little time for elaborated explanations of how the world works. English is a second language. Books are scarce. . . . He arrives at school with a fraction of the vocabulary, a fraction of the background knowledge, a fraction of the metacognitive toolkit."

The discovery lesson that works for the privileged child leaves the less-favored students bewildered, he writes. "Minimal guidance therefore does not fail equally. It sorts."

"The cruel irony is that the kind of education most loudly justified in the name of equity is often the one that most reliably privileges the already privileged," Hendrick concludes. It's what Rob Henderson calls a "luxury belief."

Explicit instruction is boosting reading scores at Djidi Djidi Aboriginal School in Australia, report Conor Duffy and Cath McAloon. Now nearly all students are reading at grade level before going on to high school.

Students get 90 minutes of "highly structured literacy lessons," they write. Teachers teach skills directly, checking for understanding. They don't move on till students have understood the lesson.

The school also proves "predictable, safe classroom routines," a model "designed to help students who have experienced trauma or adversity."