Hands on, minds off: Constructing confusion

Being busy is not a proxy for learning, psychologist Paul Kirschner tells Holly Korbey in a Bell Ringer interview. Kirschner, co-author of How Learning Happens and How Teaching Happens, talks about his recent essay, The Seductive Appeal of Discovery Learning.

"Discovery learning" emphasizes students "engaging with their environment to explore, investigate and construct knowledge instead of being taught or instructed," says Kirschner. "And it sounds really, really good, but there are a heck of a lot of problems with that idea."

It's "incredibly pervasive" in U.S. schools, and in England, Belgium and the Netherlands, says Kirschner. But, after 20 to 25 years of falling achievement scores, people finally have noticed that it's "widened the equity gap instead of closing it." Belgium and England are moving to evidence-based teaching methods and "knowledge-rich curriculum" in search of better academic results, he says.

Korbey asks: Why doesn't discovery learning work?

Unstructured exploration overwhelms students' working memory, Kirschner answers. They're juggling so many things that they can't learn anything new. It's time-consuming, often leads to misconceptions and "the frustration from repeated failures often undermines motivation and satisfaction."

Students with prior knowledge may be able to think strategically, but novices rely on random guessing, he says. Expecting novices to "think like a scientist" or "think like a mathematician" is unrealistic. They don't know enough.

"Discovery" students are active and busy, Kirschner concludes. But they don't necessarily understand what they're doing.

Sometimes, kids confuse effort with learning, says Korbey. She recalls making Beowulf's arm out of paper-mache. "And what did you understand about Beowulf afterwards?," he asks.

Children who are supposed to be learning about volcanoes and volcanism make paper-mache volcanoes, fill a bottle with Coca-Cola and they throw two Mentos mints in and foam comes out of it . . . if you ask them afterwards from, how does magma different from lava? How does plate tectonics relate to volcanism? They have no idea what you're talking about because they've been active but not actively cognitively learning.

When students start with basic knowledge, they can deepen their understanding through projects, field work and problem solving, he says. "But if you don't know anything, you can't understand anything. . . . How are you going to question, analyze and apply knowledge that you don't have?"

I remember observing a chemistry class years ago at a high school that had launched a medical magnet. "We try for hands-on learning," the teacher said. "But not 'hands-on, minds-off'. That's a waste of time."

Explicit, structured, teacher-in-charge instruction improves student behavior, as well as academic learning, writes Rebecca Birch, an Australian educator.

In the average classroom, 8 percent of students are openly uncooperative, 20 percent are quietly disengaged and 12 percent engage in regular low-level disruption, researchers estimate.

"Explicit teaching provides multiple opportunities for teachers to praise and encourage, developing safety and student feelings of competence," Birch writes. "When routines are clear, transitions are smooth, and expectations are high, behaviour often takes care of itself."