The Contest Winner: Finding The Right Side

It’s abundantly clear that both practice and instruction are necessary for effective learning. Advocates of Direct Instruction make ample room for practice after seeing examples. Studies that support a problem-first approach still require that the student is eventually shown the correct answer.

Thus, we can immediately rule out extremes. Pure discovery learning, where students are never shown instructions or examples, fails miserably.

Regardless of the optimal procedure—either see an example, then do practice, or attempt a solution, then see the example—both ingredients are necessary.