PEDAGOGY OF DISCOVERY

The “Pedagogy of Discovery” had its background in the frame of Constructivist Psychology, which offers a great number of variations, the most relevant amongst them being, I believe, those proposed by Ausubel, especially his concept of “cognitive bridges,” and those postulated by Jean Piaget about assimilation and accommodation. To Ausubel, for example, everything is a matter of establishing relationships, which are facilitated by the existence of “cognitive bridges” which make information become meaningful because of its relationship with the pre-existing global structure. The achievement of the teaching process is accomplished through three stages: first, the availability of general concepts which are progressively differentiated; second, the consolidation of concepts; real learning is achieved in the third phase, the integrating conciliation, as it is the one which forcedly leads to reformulate similarities and differences between previous and newly acquired knowledge, creating a wider global wholeness. Likewise, with his Psychology of Development, Jean Piaget arrives at the conclusion that a person deals with new information as a function of previously constituted acquisitions, i.e. he assimilates it; for this reason, it is not uncommon that an accommodation becomes necessary, the whole process resulting in a transformation of the schemes of thought. Thus, the goal consists in connecting new information to what is already known and to insert it in some notions, taking the individual’s available schemes into consideration.