Towards the Development of the Invention Coach: a Naturalistic Study of Teacher Guidance for an Exploratory Learning Task

We describe a study of naturalistic teacher guidance for an exploratory learning activity called Invention. Our study illustrates a specific pedagogical style, whereby the teacher offers little feedback and few explanations, but largely poses questions, to help students identify and remedy their own errors. These findings have informed the design of a computerized Invention Coach and may apply more broadly to other exploratory learning environments.