Discovery, Task Completion, and the Assignment as Factors in Motivation

Abstract

Discovery of learning are in the forefront of the instructional techniques to which educators are currently giving attention. Largescale curriculum projects in science and mathematics, as well as numerous research studies, feature independent discovery, self-directed study, or heuristic The teacher or experimenter using these approaches directs the learner's attention to some data or problems and encourages him to search more-or-less independently for solutions, rules, or effective strategies. The teacher may provide various forms and degrees of guidance, but not the answers; the learner is expected to find, derive, infer, or discover them. This popularity may suggest that discovery methods have been shown to be generally superior to other methods. However, the experimental findings of Craig (1956), Kittell (1957), Kersh (1958, 1962), and Wittrock (1963) do not bear this out. When the criterion is how fast subjects learn easily understood rules or how well they remember and use these rules to solve problems, giving them the rules initially is as effective as encouraging them to find the rules. On the other hand, Kersh (1958, 1962) found that a larger proportion of those subjects who discovered rules than of those who were given rules continued to try to learn and use the rules independently. This effect alone, if confirmed, may justify more emphasis on learning through discovery. The reasons for this motivational effect are not now evident. One possibility is the Zeigarnik effect of greater retention for unfinished tasks or the related Ovsiankina effect of a tendency to resume such tasks. In one of Kersh's experiments (1958), many subjects in a No-Help group failed to learn a rule for finding the sum of a number series during the learning period (i.e., they did not finish their task) and a number of the subjects in this group reported work on this task after the learning period.