Teaching: Pain & Progress in Discovery

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At Chicago's Mather High School, an honors class in physics is discussing the properties of gas. "They mix together," volunteers one student. "They expand and contract," says another. How about constructing a model, suggests Teacher Daniel Cieslik: "Should it look like a big wad of cotton? That expands and contracts." By prodding and questioning, Cieslik eventually gets the class to focus on the rapid molecular motion that characterizes gases.

Cieslik's mode of questioning is the essence of the discovery approach to science (TIME, Dec. 16, 1966), in which Socratic discussion led by a teacher forces students to hit upon conclusions of their own. Although now widely used in U.S. high school physics, biology and earth-science courses, and heartily endorsed by university-based educational theorists, the method has—perhaps inevitably—come up against the same kind of hostility that faces many another academic reform. In varying degrees, the discovery approach has become a problem for teachers, parents and students alike.

Lighting Up. The most pressing problem involves teachers. Many are reluctant to make the necessary psychological shift from the traditional method of handing out their own or textbook conclusions to students to learn by role. Few colleges prepare teachers for the discovery technique, and systematic retraining of present teachers is rare. Officials at the American Association for the Advancement of Science estimate that about half of the teachers handling the new courses are not using the course materials properly. Since the method also demands a good deal more preparation for each class, success depends upon teacher enthusiasm. "Only if the teacher is on fire will his class really light up," says Los Angeles Schools' science curriculum supervisor, Robert McLaren.

Teachers who have adjusted to the new courses frequently run up against parental misunderstandings. Since the discovery approach accents the learning of basic principles rather than concrete facts—such as learning the parts of an internal-combustion engine or memorizing the table of elements—parents complain that their children "aren't learning anything." A more serious problem is evaluating a child's performance in discovery classes. One study showed that many students who made A's and B's in traditional physics courses slipped to C's and D's in the new courses. Richard Knabel, an earth-science teacher in Yorktown, N.Y., complains that parents are so worried about getting their children into college that "it runs me up the wall—and the kids often have a block against real learning because all they worry about is grades."

Show Me & Prove It. Considering the research consciousness of education experts, it is quite surprising that there are no major studies showing just how effective discovery courses have been. Spot checks, however, indicate that students who have mastered the new approach do well on college entrance exams and have little difficulty in their college science courses—even though these rarely employ the discovery method. Such students, contends Dr. Keith Kelson, deputy associate director of the National Science Foundation, "no longer accept flat statements from professors—they have a distinct show-me-and-prove-it attitude."