According to Amparo Lardizabal et. al, 1991 "Self-discovery as a learning process is figuring out things for one self. The teacher, in employing this process as he provides the proper learning situation within which the pupils can discover solutions to their problem, actually resorts to the use of two types of discovery---the guided discovery and the pure discovery."
The authors defined the two types of discovery as:
Guided discovery " is an approach to instruction by which the teacher tries to draw out from his pupils certain bits of information through properly organized questions and explanations leading them to the eventual discovery of particular concepts or principl es." It only means that the teacher here ask question for the purpose of allowing the students get information from their own stored knowledge in the brain. That particular questions serve as a guide for the student to get some information from within without relying to someone else, and it allows the student to learn more and easily absorb the information given.
Pure discovery "is an approach where the pupils are expected to arrive at certain concepts and principles completely by themselves, i.e, with little or no guidance from the teacher except for the explanation of particular terms of references." It only means that the student must draw out information without the guidance of the question that leads them to give out information of what they know about the teacher''s explanation.
This types of discovery implies on how much do the student know about the discussion, allowing the students to draw out information without relying to someone else not even to the teachers.
What do self-discovery really mean? In the aspect of teaching and learning process, self-discovery means the teacher must allow the learners to draw out what they have learned with or without the guidance of questioning.
The teacher must always allow the student to learn from himself and allowing the student to draw out the stored knowledge of the students.