ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine some aspects of how such approaches are worked out in classroom practice. The curriculum development movement of the 1960s produced what purported to be a new way of learning at secondary level. Instead of the pupils being the passive recipients of lectures, or participating in drill-and-practice sessions, the new curricula posited a different relationship between teacher and taught, and a different mode of learning. During the field work, the classes were 'doing' photosynthesis—working through a series of controlled experiments to display the relative effects of light and chlorophyll. As a teaching strategy, 'guided discovery' in one of its forms is difficult to sustain. There are many points at which it can go wrong. Teachers using it need to engage in artful stage-management if they are to bring it off successfully.
