Now that you, as a teacher, are aware of the benefits of learning through self-discovery, the question arises of how to distinguish this teaching model from more conventional ones you may be using. Here I will cover some advice I’ve picked up from being on both the student and teacher sides of the situation.
In traditional teaching molds, the teacher is in charge of the learning. You tell your students directly what they need to know. However, this leaves a gap of how that knowledge came to be: why it is true, how you can prove it, and so forth. This is something that, with proper preparation by the teacher, can be easily accomplished. The key is to identify what the students can teach themselves without knowing anything related to the topic you want them to understand. Note that this topic mostly applies to STEM subjects; students can’t really discover history on their own without time machines, but you can always challenge them to make predictions on new material!
Anyway, back to the treatment of STEM subjects. For students to teach themselves, you must set them up to discover something on their own. This may be a mathematical formula (such as the Quadratic Formula) or a physical principle (such as Ohm’s Law). Students should be convinced that some idea holds true either through empirical data or a rigorous mathematical argument.
Empirical data “discovery” techniques are best used in science classes. One concept this can be used on is the Law of Conservation of Mass. Have students weigh two reactants for a reaction separately, then let them combine the reactants to achieve the desired reaction. As long as there are no gaseous products, the students will be able to see that the resulting mix of chemicals has the same total mass as the products they started with! Make sure they do this with several different reactions so they see that the idea being proposed holds not just in one scenario.
When guiding students through rigorous proofs, however, you must be careful that they are not too involved. Overly complicated proofs will drain the attention spans of the students and they will forget the process you are trying to get them to figure out. These proofs should not involve more than about four steps of algebra so they remain relatively simple. Make them aware of what their “end goal” is: what they are trying to prove. Perhaps give them a starting point for where to begin performing computations, such as another statement they already [should] know is true. As these proofs often take some ingenuity to design, such “discovery” activities are best done in groups. I will cover ways for teachers to guide collaboration in Part III.