My personal philosophy of education is based primarily on Jerome Bruner's concept of discovery learning. As Bruner (1979, p. 88) puts it, "to the degree that one is able to approach learning as a task of discovering something rather than 'learning about' it, to that degree there will be a tendency for the child to work with the autonomy of self-reward or, more properly, be rewarded by discovery itself." As one of the major cognitive psychology theorists, Bruner-along with Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert-focused on the internal process that takes place when children learn, a process that requires the student's active participation (Conte, 1995). Cognitive psychology "helped spawn the concept of discovery learning, in which students are put in situations where they must learn for themselves, rather than being told the answers by their teachers" (Conte, 1995).
My own educational background was instrumental in helping me arrive at an appreciation of Bruner's discovery learning. When I was in school, the primary mode of teaching was for the teacher to drill the students on facts and then require them to regurgitate those facts on quizzes and tests. Not surprisingly, I found this rather boring, especially in subjects that I did not do well in. My motivation for learning dates, vocabulary words, and other seeming trivia was at a low ebb, and I found it difficult to concentrate when my study time had to be devoted primarily to rote memorization. On the other hand, I did have a few teachers whose approach was somewhat akin to Bruner's. In those classes, learning was not-or at least not solely-a matter of parroting facts to the teacher but also included some discovery. In science class, for example, although the teacher lectured and demanded that we take notes, he also gave us ample time to explore specimens and draw our own conclusions about what we were seeing. In the classes where discovery was promoted, I was mesmer...