Learning And Teaching Generalization, Discovery, and Associative Thinking

A generalization is a proposition that defines a relationship between two or more concepts. An example of this is the proposition that says: “The gravitational force between objects is directly proportional to the product of their mass, and inversely to the square of the distance between them.” In this generalization, three concepts are used: force, mass, and distance, and the relationship between them is supervenience that is determined by proportional limits.

Discovery is the ability to research, experiment, and work to uncover secrets, features, and things that were not visible before. Humans began to discover many things over the previous eras. They discovered fire, electricity, radio waves, oil, and many other discoveries that made us reach the progress and development we have reached today.

As for associative thinking, it is a form of thinking in which information and intellectual data flow without restrictions or guidance. The individual allows their brain to associate ideas and information in different ways and allows it to give them new, varied possibilities. This type of thinking is also called undirected thinking, where a person does not direct or link their thoughts, and gives their mind the freedom to connect and analyze. In this article, we will learn how to learn generalization, discovery, and associative thinking, so read on.

Learning and teaching generalization:

Generalization is usually created to be applied to more than one incident. The concepts included in the generalization refer to sayings or categories, and defining the relationship between these categories is intended to form a relationship that applies to all cases of special concepts. An example is the generalization that says: “The volume of gas is directly proportional to temperature. When temperature decreases, the volume of gas decreases, and vice versa”. It applies to all special cases of changes in volume and temperature, as well as to all gaseous substances present in nature.

The understanding levels of generalizations:

• Generalization can be learned by memorizing it. For example, the individual memorizes that democracy flourishes when freedom of expression is maintained. Many generalizations are acquired like this, and the psychological process of acquiring generalizations at that level is essentially a process of memorization that does not always include understanding.

• A person has to understand a generalization that they can apply in many cases. For example, to understand the generalization that says: “The temperature of gas and its volume are directly proportional,” which makes them able to explain the increase in gas pressure in the wheel of a car that drove for several hours. Likewise, one understands the generalizations related to the relationship between wages and prices when they can explain the phenomenon of monetary inflation using these generalizations. 

Discovery teaching and learning:

A series of exciting discovery curricula has taken over the schools of many educationally advanced countries in recent years. Each of these programs has introduced new content into the curriculum, renewed, and reorganized each subject for primary, middle, and high school students in a new format and organization.

The growth of the new curricula has been accompanied by the emergence of interest in the processes through which the types of cognitive behavior are acquired. The cognitive processes of main importance are those that require the learner to create ideas, differentiate complex stimuli, make guesses, imagine hypotheses, ask questions, and then build methods to stimulate these processes in class.

Technical study, intuitive thinking, research training, and discovery learning are necessary and recommended methods to achieve the goals of this renewal.

Bruner describes these goals by saying: “Mastering basic ideas in a field involves not only understanding the general principles, but also developing a position on learning and research, and towards guessing and hypothesizing, and the ability of solving one’s own problems. Such positions require more than just the presentation of basic ideas. One of the general elements in this seems to be a sense of discovery, which is the discovery of a pattern of relationships and similarities between ideas that leads to an increase in self-confidence and confidence in one's own abilities.”

To achieve these goals, the learning experience must be built. It provokes discovery, research, and innovation, and it causes forms of generalization and organization behaviors. The name of discovery learning is given to the group of methods that were prepared to cause these types of cognitive behavior. The processes involved in discovery learning are modified forms of inductive learning. In the deductive process, the student is given the rule or generalization, and they must discover by themselves the examples to which the rule or generalization applies.

Experiments results in the field of discovery learning:

Several experiments were conducted on discovery learning. The most prominent results of such experiments were the following:

The group that received some guidance in discovery understood the involved relationships better than other groups that did not receive any guidance, and the group that did not receive any help were better than the group that was given the rule.

The experiment also confirms that the method that facilitates meaningful learning is better than rote memorization learning methods.

Results also suggest that the transition of training to new situations was facilitated by future discovery.

It was found that the individuals in the group that was not provided with any guidance were motivated to continue solving problems more than the members of the other group. Even when all individuals were motivated by external rewards, the individual in the group that was not provided with assistance developed an interest in the problems themselves .

The rote memorization learning group was better at applying and remembering generalizations than the other groups, and the guided discovery group had better results than the guided learning group.

Based on this, it can be assumed that learning through independent discovery facilitates a greater comprehensive understanding. However, not all individuals in the group that was not provided with any assistance were able to discover the generalization without assistance within the specified period. It was found that the level of the learner and the specified period for discovery also affects that.

Associative thinking:

If you were asked what is the name of the street where you live, you would immediately answer correctly, and you probably learned this answer originally by associating the name of the street with simple directing signs, and one of these signs was the following question: What street do you live on?

We teach children their names, house numbers, street names where their houses are, and many other common things by associating these names and numbers with appropriate stimuli, and developing associations linking responses to stimuli that we call directing cues. The appropriate response is issued easily and quickly when these signals or stimuli occur. This cognitive process is simpler than inductive and deductive thinking, and than the acquisition of concepts and generalizations, and is more used in life. Most thinking is of the associative type, as it enables one to interpret their surroundings. Imagine how difficult life would be if we had to think about knowing the name of every person we encounter, or the name of every general thing.

The educational meaning behind associative thinking:

The educational meaning behind associative thinking is that desired changes in behavior require learning of associations, and while we want children to understand multiplication, we also want them to learn the necessary associations in the multiplication table.

That is, when the child is given the following stimuli (2x2=?), we want them to be able to answer (4) easily and quickly. There are many examples about encouraging students to use associative thinking when we ask them to learn forms of different kinds, vocabulary of foreign languages, and dates of historical events.

Some of the associations that you encourage the students to learn can give meaning when the principle behind the association is explained or discovered. The student can understand why 2 x 2 = 4 when they understand the principles of multiplication. In this context, we encourage the student to remember the associations in the multiplication table because the relationship between understanding, memorizing, and remembering is close.

Meaningless associations:

Many of the associations that are taught in schools are meaningless. Saying that Amman is the capital of Jordan must be learned without being able to give a reasonable meaning to the location of the capital of Jordan. However, we can give a meaning to 2 x 2 = 4. If we try, we may be able to clarify the history of naming Amman as the capital of Jordan, but this explanation does not give the link meaning.

Another example of meaningless associations is the link between a red light and stopping at traffic lights. The agreement that governs traffic lights is arbitrary, but before someone can apply traffic rules, they must learn this association. It may be impossible to explain that the red color indicates stooping, because it is only an agreement between people.

Modern education places great emphasis on making learning meaningful. We must differentiate here between giving meaning to learning a task, and the meaning inherent to the nature of the task. You may make the task of learning that Amman is the capital of Jordan meaningful by linking the task to important concepts or generalizations that the student must learn to meet their needs.

Associations, whether they have meaning or not, depend on memory. An individual must memorize an association to use it. A student who is unable to remember the multiplication tables is slow in completing arithmetic tasks. That is why is it necessary to discuss associative thinking to understand the factors that affect remembering and forgetting in order to organize learning experiences to facilitate the acquisition of these associations?

In conclusion:

In this article, we learned about the learning and teaching of generalization, discovery, associative thinking, the experiments’ results in learning discovery, and the levels of understanding generalization. Moreover, we discussed the educational meaning of associative thinking and meaningless associations, all in hopes of benefiting from this article.