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;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887; e-mail: [log in to unmask]
World Wide Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/