Why use discovery learning when teaching?

As we go through our lives, we find ourselves in the need to resort to learning on a permanent basis; we never stop obtaining skills and abilities that serve us for our personal and intellectual development, being of great importance because thanks to this learning we can perform better in society, resulting in highly productive beings.

For this purpose, institutions such as schools and universities have been created where we turn to obtain a better learning by providing us with the best tools that allow us to develop in today's world. Throughout time, different teaching and learning strategies have been used to encourage the development of knowledge in an effective way.

Among these methodological strategies is learning by discovery, which focuses the acquisition of knowledge on the student, who investigates, searches, researches and is motivated to achieve such learning.

This type of learning was proposed by Bruner, and is part of constructivism, which states that the subject is an active part of his own learning and not passive. This occurs through the process of accommodation and assimilation of new knowledge in this way the student acquires knowledge.

In this sense it can be said that the acquisition of knowledge does not come from the external environment, but is sought by encouraging the student, giving him strategies that facilitate him to acquire it according to his own interests. This through the establishment of hypotheses from which the subject reaches his own conclusions through research based on the identification of problems to be solved actively.

Therefore, it is important to emphasize that the student resorts to accommodation through previous knowledge, which is assimilated in the psychic structure, allowing the subject to generate his own learning.

This type of knowledge is put into practice in the teaching of science, since the student resorts to research and problem solving being more effective, leaving aside rote learning and repetition of information.

It is important to highlight that learning by discovery can be very useful for day-to-day life, since it fosters creativity and critical thinking, which is transcendental for the resolution of diverse situations that arise in daily or academic life, transforming us into people with a high level of knowledge prepared for working life.