Limits of Direct Instruction

Exchange Emerging Leader Claire Vallotton shared this great Slate article, "Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School," by Alison Gopnik. In the introduction Gopnik asks... "Shouldn't very young children be allowed to explore, inquire, play, and discover? Perhaps direct instruction can help children learn specific facts and skills, but what about curiosity and creativity — abilities that are even more important for learning in the long run?... While learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution."

One of the experiments Gopnik shared was from her lab at UC-Berkeley in which researchers introduced 4-year-old children to a new toy and demonstrated a series of three actions.  Some sequences caused the toy to play music, but not all. Only the sequences that ended with the same two actions made the music play. One of the researchers, Daphne, ran through the same nine sequences with all children, but with one group she acted as if she were clueless about the toy. ("Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works?") With the other 4-year-olds, Daphne acted like a teacher. ("Here's how the toy works.")

"When she acted clueless, many of the children figured out the most intelligent way of getting the toy to play music (performing just the two key actions, something that Daphne had not demonstrated). But when Daphne acted like a teacher, the children imitated her exactly, rather than discovering the more intelligent and more novel two-action solution."

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