Engineering discovery learning: The contingency adduction of some precursors of textual responding in a beginning program.

A learning situation in which the principal content of what is to be learned is not given but is independently discovered by the learner is often considered "discovery learning." Recently, learning scientists have been able to make explicit some of the conditions under which such independent discovery is likely to occur (Andronis, 1983; Epstein, 1996; Johnson & Layng, 1992). One form of "discovery" can often be observed when skills learned under one set of conditions are recruited under new conditions to serve a new or different function-a process of "contingency adduction" (Andronis, Layng, & Goldiamond, 1997).