Discovery Learning Strategy in Geographical Education: A Sample of Lesson Design

Abstract

The practice and activity examples are quite limited regarding how the learning-teaching processes, which are offered by the teaching program of geography lesson prepared in 2005, updated in 2011 and amended comprehensively in 2017, can be achieved. There is not any teachers’ guide analyzing the teaching program’s approach and how it should be conducted is available in this matter, indeed. For this reason, the application of the program is completely under the initiative of teachers. This research aims at analyzing the discovery learning strategy, one of the strategies made use of in geography teaching, preparing an example lesson plan as to how the discovery learning strategy can be transferred to classrooms and developing suggestions in order to fill the gap in the literature even a little and increase the number of model applications. The reason why the discovery learning strategy is chosen in the research is the fact that it is in compliance with the student-centered approach proposed by the geography teaching program in effect because it is essential in the discovery learning strategy that students are centered and teachers act as guides. The research was conducted by means of descriptive analysis method. Within this frame, the discovery learning strategy was examined; the importance of planning the teaching activities was explained and a lesson template was created. With reference to the mentioned template; a lesson plan example based on the subject “Interior Structure of the Earth” was prepared in order to offer an example regarding how the discovery learning strategy can be moved to classrooms. The research results are anticipated to be useful for geography and other branch teachers and to constitute a basis for prospective academic studies.