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Josh Kurzweil's avatar

Love the hook about a medical diagnosis! Your discussion of the inductive/deductive/guided discovery brings me back to lots of language teacher training debates, and I love how you sort it out while weaving it in with the Science of Learning research. BTW, I think that Task-based language learning also fits in nicely with this discussion.

Javier Santana's avatar

I’m glad it resonated! It’s a fascinating topic because it’s the idea behind many of the greatest learning experiences but we need to be careful not to idealize what learners can do. And yes, as with inductive learning, task-based or project-based learning can boost motivation, but also there what’s important is the design of the learning experience: are you providing the clear explanation of the concepts and rules that learners must learn? Are you providing guidance? Don’t leave it up to them to find out what to generalize! Note that “task-based” has often been a term used to rebrand unguided discovery learning, which is what we should totally avoid!