What is Discovery Learning?

Discovery learning is an instructional approach within educational practice that emphasises an individual’s place as an active constructor of their own knowledge, understanding, and skills. In discovery learning, an individual is encouraged and empowered to take ownership of their learning, enabling them to engage with and explore knowledge and concepts on their own, often through hands-on experiences, experimentation, and inquiry-based activities. This approach intends to provide an individual with a broader, more connected and longer-lasting knowledge, understanding and skills.

Discovery learning can be viewed as fitting within the constructivist and experientialist schools of thought, which underpins this approach to thinking.  This connection is made through discovery learning, suggesting that individuals actively construct their understanding of the world through firsthand experiences and interactions rather than passively receiving information from others.

Within Discovery learning, the individual actively explores, observes, questions, and experiments to make sense of concepts they are presented with. It enables, as supported by Wilke and Straits (2001), the development of problem-solving skills, challenge mapping, and questions that can further stimulate their curiosity and critical thinking skills. This is partly because, through this instructional approach, individuals are prompted to investigate, analyse, and solve problems independently as well as collaboratively with peers and facilitators. 

Discovery learning, as noted, promotes and requires self-directed learning. Individuals have the freedom to choose their paths of exploration, make decisions about how to approach tasks and take ownership of their learning process. However, while discovery learning promotes and requires self-directed learning, it does not mean an individual is left to struggle, develop inappropriate or incorrect connections, or stagnate in their progress. Instead, an individual will receive scaffolded support, guidance, and prompts from a facilitator who replaces the more traditional role of the teacher in discovery learning, as they are not required to teach but to support and guide an individual’s self-directed learning journey.

As part of the role of the facilitator, they are tasked with posing thought-provoking questions, offering hints, providing resources, and facilitating discussions to scaffold the learning processes. As suggested by Bryce and Blown (2023), the theory of Ausubel meaningful learning supports the idea behind discovery learning and, in particular, that of the role of the facilitator in questioning and enabling discussion, and he believes individuals are able to learn and develop more effectively through the use of meaningful knowledge, understanding and skills from verbal and textual activities within their learning environments.

Alongside hands-on experiences, experimentation, and inquiry-based activities, discovery learning incorporates real-world contexts and problems into an individual’s learning journey to support and promote connections being made with previous learning and experience, which is seen within constructivism as a crucial step in the learning process.  This practice also supports individuals in contextualising the knowledge, concepts, or skills being offered to them in a meaningful and relevant manner to an individual’s lived experience and macro-environment. By connecting abstract concepts to concrete experiences, an individual, as suggested within constructivism, is better able to grasp the significance and applicability of what they are learning. 

Another aspect that is seen as a core element of discovery learning’s effectiveness is its requirement for individuals to critically and continuously reflect on their current knowledge, understanding, skills and learning pathway. This is done in order to identify gaps and evaluate the potential next steps within an individual learning journey. This critical evaluation of an individual’s own knowledge in order to identify future knowledge, understanding, and required skills enables them to develop effective strategies for addressing and gaining the desired learning outcome. 

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Reference list

T, Bryce and J, Blown,. 2023. Ausubel’s meaningful learning re-visited. Journal of Current Psychology. DOI: 10.1007/s12144-023-04440-4

R, Wilke and W, Straits,. 2001. The Effects of Discovery Learning in a Lower-Division Biology Course. Advances in Physiology Education. 25 (2). 62-69