Intrinsic Motivation and Discovery Based Learning

Reprinted from Conceptual-Math Pedagogical Considerations

Why discovery based?  In fact this is the way we learn deeply.  When learning is intrinsically self-motivated it has personal meaning.  The brain is designed to support the human being, by this, whatever is serving that person becomes relevant and a point of interest which the brain will subsequently work to learn about.

Learning comes from having a question.  In a discovery based approach, we seek to incite curiosity, rather than memorization.  We encourage exploration of an idea, rather than focus on getting a right answer. 

Learning is also a developmental process. It happens because we are creating new connections in the brain.  Working from procedural and implicit learning, we are laying down new neural pathways.  The time spent laying down these pathways is only the first step to creating joyful learning experiences for our students.  The second step is to allow students to experience the Ah-ha moment.  This is when the connections from the implicit learning that has been laid down are brought into conscious awareness. This moment of moving from implicit to explicit learning is associated with a burst of our reward neurotransmitter dopamine.  Learning really is that naturally rewarding and motivating when we create the right conditions.
 
In education we have taken away the most powerful part of the learning by giving the explanation up front.  Learning should be fun.  Learning releases dopamine!  When you have the Ah-ha moment it is like a burst of enthusiasm and a natural high.  So why are our students so apathetic?  Because they don’t often get to experience that dopamine burst.  They are told the answer.  We don’t wait or have the patience for them to learn in the natural way.  Learning becomes a chore without the natural reward.  Then, we build in artificial rewards to take the place of that loss, but these rewards are not connected to the learning itself.  The dopamine burst is there not just to create pleasure for no reason, but it helps to strengthen the new learning.  This produces “deep learning”.
 
My move into the field of education was a direct result of the overzealous prescribing of powerful medications that affect the primary motivations systems in the brain.  I shared about dopamine’s role in learning.  These drugs artificially increase dopamine, but there is no context, or personal motivation, and the system becomes dependent on this outside supply of dopamine rather than being allowed to develop and respond naturally to what is truly personally motivating.
 
Our motivation to learn comes from a desire to answer a question.  As Allison Gopnik says, we are all scientists from the day we are born, seeking to understand the world around us.  At the very core, simply by doing, we create the desire to be able to explain and understand what we are doing.  This is the moment at which explicit learning becomes a critical component of Conceptual Math. 
 
I have said earlier, that knowing when to move from implicit to explicit learning is a sensitive issue.  If we force students to give us the explanation too early, they can emotionally shut down. Frequently, we as teachers become impatient and simply give them the answer.  This steals the wonderful and amazing Ah-ha moment of discovery that anchors in the new learning for life.
 
When do we start pushing for explicit answers? The best indicator is the moment is when the student has the question.  Once the student has the question, once the concept has been built through experience, the teacher can help create the support to draw out the answer.  At that moment, the student will have discovered a truth.  They will have the experienced the Ah-Ha moment.  They will have connected the dots from all of the pieces of information, including the words and names they may have already heard.  This is the moment when deep learning happens.