Don't Show, Don't Tell? Direct Instruction Can Thwart Independent Exploration

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110630112857.htm

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2011) — Suppose someone showed you a novel gadget and told you, "Here's how it works," while demonstrating a single function, such as pushing a button. What would you do when they handed it to you?

You'd probably push the button. But what if the gadget had other functions? Would it occur to you to search for them, if your teacher hadn't alluded to their existence?

Maybe, maybe not. It turns out that there is a "double-edged sword" to pedagogy: Explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery. A study by MIT researchers and colleagues compared the behavior of children given a novel toy under four different conditions, finding that children expressly taught one of its functions played with the toy for less time and discovered fewer things to do with it than children in the other three scenarios.
According to Laura Schulz, the Class of 1943 Career Development Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at MIT, this is rational behavior, as teaching is meant to impart skills quickly and efficiently. The danger is leading children to believe that they've learned all there is to know, thereby discouraging independent discovery. "If I teach you this one thing and then I stop, then you may say, 'Well that's probably all there is,'" Schulz says.

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These results suggest children are extremely sensitive to the subtleties of a teaching scenario, Schulz says: What matters is not if children are shown a function, but how they are shown that function. If they believe that an informed teacher has taught them everything, they will be less motivated to explore.

In a related experiment, the researchers replicated their results among children who were indirect observers of others being taught: Those who were given the toy after merely watching an adult interact with another child, using the same paradigms as the first study, did less exploring when they'd witnessed the pedagogical scenario than any of the other three scenarios

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