ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a theoretical rationale for undergraduate research that is grounded in constructive developmentalism, an ascending school of thought that draws upon the constructivist branch of learning theory, together with the cognitive-structural and psychosocial branches of developmental theory. The growing interest in undergraduate research within American higher education has been linked in the academic literature to an even broader trend toward the adoption of active and collaborative pedagogies, which in turn is grounded in constructivist learning theory. Discovery learning has been defined as "a constructivist approach to teaching in which students are encouraged to discover principles for themselves". The process of student discovery can be facilitated, using a technique known as inquiry learning, which has been defined as an "approach in which the teacher presents a puzzling situation and students solve the problem by gathering data and testing their conclusions".
