discovery learning = immersion

Barry (pdf file) left this passage from Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching by Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, Richard E. Clark (pdf file):

Despite this clear distinction between learning a discipline and practicing a discipline, many curriculum developers, educational technologists and educators seem to confuse the teaching of a discipline as inquiry (i.e., a curricular emphasis on the research processes within a science) with the teaching of the discipline by inquiry (i.e., using the research process of the discipline as a pedagogy or for learning. The basis of this confusion may lie in what Hurd (1969) called the rationale of the scientist, which holds that a course of instruction in science should be a mirror image of a science discipline, with regard to both its conceptual structure and its patterns of inquiry. The theories and methods of modern science should be reflected


in the classroom. In teaching a science, classroom operations should be a mirror image of a science discipline, with regard to both its conceptual structure and its patterns of inquiry. The theories and methods of modern science should be reflected in the classroom. In teaching a science, classroom operations should be in harmony with its investigatory processes and supportive of the conceptual, the intuitive, and the theoretical structure of its knowledge. (p. 16)


This rationale assumes

that the attainment of certain attitudes, the fostering of interest in science, the acquisition of laboratory skills, the learning of scientific knowledge, and the understanding of the nature of science were all to be approached through the methodology of science, which was, in general, seen in inductive terms. (Hodson, 1988, p. 22) "

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 41(2), 75–86

And, from Why Minimally Guided Teaching Techniques Do Not Work: A Reply to Commentaries (pdf file):

For several decades, educational psychology has been dominated by the view that direct explicit instruction is inferior to various combinations of discovery learning or “immersion” in the procedures of a discipline. This view was both attractive and plausible on the grounds that the bulk of what we learn outside of educational institutions is learned either by discovery or immersion.

Sweller, Kirschner, ClarkEDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 42(2), 115–121

note: decades