Discovery Learning and Transfer of Problem-Solving Skills

A framework for understanding the effects of discovery learning on the transfer of problem-solving skill is presented. A distinction is drawn between applying a learned strategy on a transfer problem versus having to generate a novel strategy to solve a transfer problem. The main premise of the framework is that requiring discovery of a strategy while in training encourages the activation or refinement of procedures that are useful for generating a novel strategy. In general, then, the primary benefit of discovery is that it should facilitate transfer to tasks requiring a novel strategy. Learning by discovery, however, may provide little benefit for tasks that can be completed only by applying the learned strategy. Two experiments provided support and further refinement of this hypothesis. Experiment 1 used a transfer problem that could be solved with the general strategy learned in training but required new move sequences to instantiate the strategy. The results indicated that, when transfer required new...