Following recent questions and discussions on various Lists:
The principle of 'learning by discovery' has a very long pedigree.
In science education, the British organic chemist, Henry Edward Armstrong (1848 - 1937) developed and proposed what he termed the 'heuristic method' of child-centred learning through experience and experiment, in contrast with contemporary, didactic, teacher-centred approaches, based largely on learning by rote. Armstrong first launched his ideas at the International Conference on Education which marked the opening of the new building for the City and Guilds Institute in South Kensington (London) in August 1884, where Armstrong was appointed Professor of Chemistry.
The word 'heurism' was derived from the Greek 'heureka' - 'I have found out' - best known in the form of Aristotle's reported exclamation as he jumped out of his bath in excitement: 'Eureka!'.
In one his most widely quoted aphorisms H.E. Armstrong claimed: 'Heuristic methods are methods which involve placing our students as far as possible in the attitude of the discoverer'. Using the British Association for the Advancement of Science as his main platform (he helped create the BAAS's new Education Section in 1900, and prepared its comprehensive survey of and report on science education in 1902), Armstrong worked unceasingly for 'discovery method' teaching and learning and participated in teacher education until he was well into his 80s.
My own science teaching tutor of the early 1960s, Dr John Bradley of the University of Hull, who had as a young man worked as an Assistant to Armstrong, used to quote Armstrong as summarising his argument in the statement:
'I am told - I forget; I read - I remember; I do - I understand'.
Such an approach either directly or indirectly influenced science museum exhibition practice from the 1920s or 1930s onwards. Obvious examples were the London Science Museum's Children's Gallery and the French Palais de la Decouverte. Later, most notably and influentially, the same principles were taken up by Frank Oppenheimer in the establishment of the (now much copied) San Francisco Exploratorium (significantly, perhaps, working at least part of the time with the British brain/perception expert, Prof. Richard Gregory, who himself subsequently developed one of the best UK hands on science centres, the Bristol 'Exploratory'.)
However, probably the most extensive application in museums was that of Dr Saroj Ghose (London trained again) through the National Council of Science Museums of India and its many dozens of major science museums and science centres and some hundreds of associated programmes and centres within schools and colleges across India. Saroj Ghose and his large team of scientific and technical associates developed not only 'hand's on' exhibits based on heuristic (i.e. discovery) learning but took this out of the museum into extensive teacher training programmes and even an enormously successful and long-running understanding of science quiz for teenagers 'Quest' on Indian national television.
Patrick J. Boylan (Professor of Arts Policy and Management)
City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
World Wide Web site:
http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/
