Basis for the Concept Development Model

Basis for the Concept Development Model    

           The concept development model is the result of work described by Hilda Taba in the 1960s (Joyce, Weil, & Calhoum, 2009). Much of Taba’s work is out of print, but her ideas have had a major impact on inductive teaching strategies. She developed specific teaching moves that shift students toward inductive through (see Table 5. 1). At the same time, Bruner, Goodnow, and Austine (1986) were articulating the attainment of concepts, which is congruent wit Taba’s teaching ideas. Bruner et, al, (1986).

TABLE 5.1 Concept Development Sequence

Reason for Question	Examples of Question	Possible Student Response
Generate list of items	What do you notice? What do you see? Are there any patterns?	Observes prompt and lists item that are noticed
Group items by various characteristics	Do any of these  items have things in common that would make them a group? Do some items seem to belong together?	Finds similar characteristics to form groups
Label groups by specific characteristics	Why did you group some items together? What do they have in common? What name might you give these groups?	Discussed and identifies the common characteristics n each group Names the group based on the identified characteristic
Groups items in more than one place Re-label items	Could any of the items belong in more than one group? Can any of the same item fit into different groups? Explain why you would regroup these items.	Identifies new item characteristics and relationships
Summarize and synthesize information	What can you say about all of the groups that we have identified and labeled? Can we say something about what we learned in one or two sentences?	Summarized learning

Provide the reason for examining thinking at a time when behavioral psychology was the popular approach.

We begin with what seems a paradox. The world of experience of any normal man is composed of a tremendous array of discriminably different objects, events, people, impressions. There are estimated to more than seven million discriminable colors alone, and in the course of a week pr two we come in contact with a fair proportion of them. No two people we see have an identical appearance from moment to moment with alternations in light or in the position of the viewer. All of these difference we are capable of seeing, for human beings have an exquisite capacity for making distinctions.

            The authors believed that examining how we acquire and develop particular categories help us gain insight into “one of the most elementary and general forms of cognition by which man adjust to his environment. The goal of this series of studies was to find out how we learn concepts. In the end, the studies resulted in both the concept attainment model and the foundations of the concept development models. Even more than 50 years ago, psychologist and educators believed that thinking can be taught and that good thinking should not be separated from content acquisition-a very current educational belief. Taba developed a series of steps that replicate the way that we make sense of our world (Gallager, 2013). Table 5.1 shows the basic ideas of inductive thinking-noticing, grouping, listing, regrouping, and generalizing from a specific data set. These thinking moves can be used with all grade levels and content areas, as can most of the instructional models found in this text.

            The constructivist theory of learning is congruent with both concept attainment and concept development. We know that learning is an active process and that students must make connections between prior knowledge and new information. A model of instruction can help students make those links more readily and with richer associations. Both concept attainment and concept development help students develop rich conceptual schemata—the organizational structure of the human mind. And this rich conceptual schema can be developed using a small set of examples and information.

            Concept development goes beyond concept attainment. Simply put, the early research described in a Study of Thinking indicates that we attain concepts by identifying their criteria attributes. In extension, more recent theories demonstrate that ideas can also be represent by a prototype (a typical instance of a class) or an exemplar ( atypical prototype) and that these are also useful in learning concepts (Klausmeier, 1990). In all cases, it is necessary to see the concepts to be taught in terms of their relation to other concepts and to possible misconceptions. Concept attainment (Chapter Four) helps students label and identify a class of things (e.g., a banana is fruit that is long and slightly curved, has skin that change from green to yellow, and has a soft inside). Concept development moves beyond the definition to inferences that are not observable. Thus, concept development is a strategy that extends and refines our knowledge by providing an opportunity to extend and refine our personal concepts—concrete or abstract. We need both concept attainment and concept development to learn and be able transfer our knowledge of concepts.

Conceptual Thinking Is Learned

           A child will not approach his or her intellectual potential without guidance and practice in the process of thinking. And much possible critical thinking will never take place if a curriculum is so strongly content oriented that processes of learning and thinking are left to chance. On the other hand, we know that a strong content foundation  is necessary for the application of learning skills (Willingham, 2009). We need content to teach thinking skills, and we need thinking skills to use content well. To develop thinking skills is to develop an increasingly complex mental organization with which to view the world and to solve the problems. Cognitive skills are seen as products of a dynamic interaction between the individual and the stimulation he or she receives. Thus, students and teachers must follow a series of structured questions to support deeper levels of thinking (Gallagher, 2013).

Concepts Are Creative Ways of Structuring Reality

           Concepts provide easy access as learners classify and thus simplify incoming information in a meaningful and retrievable form. Concepts make it possible for humans to process data mentally. Scientist tell us that our senses are constantly being bombarded by thousands of stimuli simultaneously. Our ability to simplify, as much as our ability to absorb complexity, allow us to act an our environment. Driving is an activity that would be impossible if we were attuned to every sign, tree, house, vehicle, or person we passed. Safety and the dictates of driving demand that we screen data and assimilate only certain relevant noises, landmarks, and conditions. Subconsciously, as we drive, we put incoming data into categories marked “relevant” or “inrelevant”.

Concepts Are the Building Block of Patterns

           Concepts are the building blocks from which generalizations spring. In chapter four, we described a model that helps students acquire specific definitions of a concept by identifying the critical attributes of the concept, allowing for the discrimination of one concept from another. In this chapter, students take those identified concepts and share what they know about the concepts and together with their peers, from ideas and identify relationships between a variety of concepts. By opening the contents of our personal mental files to others and by hearing about the contents of theirs, we refine and extend our understanding of concepts, and we refine and extend the precision of our generalizations.

           In the concepts development model, a ministructure that mirrors how the human mind works is created. The focusing question produce data---not miscellaneous, indiscriminate data, but data relevant to an idea contained in the focusing question. From the data come comparisons, contrasts, and finally a theory that make sense of myriad data. This theory constitutes one’s present view of the concept under scrutiny. The purpose of the concept development model is to form generalizations from concrete data.

Steps in the Concept Development Model

When performed consecutively, the steps of the concept development model mirror a process humans employ individually as they marshal their thoughts on a particular subject, as they organize and recognize these thoughts, as they seek out new relationship and new meanings, and as they make their way through the uncharted terrains of cognition. This model may be used in kindergarten through grade 12 and beyond to explore concepts such as capitalism, imperialism, and expansionism; in mathematics, to explore concepts such as velocity, expansion, and  relatively; in science, to explore concepts such as character, theme, and  point of view. These same concepts may be expressed in simpler terms for younger students.

Planning for Teaching with the Concept Development Model

When planning to use the concept development model in particular, teachers should (1) carefully analyze the concept. (2) teach students the steps for learning with the concept development model. (3) scaffold students’ learning and metacognition through questioning and application activities. The things that educational designer do when teaching with the concept development model are discussed in the following sections.

1.      Analyze the Concepts

Before the teacher can effectively teach a concept. He or she must be clear about what the concept is. Why it is being addressed in the content area curriculum, and what developmental level it should be taught.

True mastery of  concept requires development and refinement of one’s understanding through multiple experiences and varied interactions with the concept over time. Teachers who consider their own “journey” of understanding about a concept are better able to help their students as they make their own journey. For example, Maria, the teacher in Scenario 7.3. might reflect on her struggle to learn about good nutrition. She might remember the challenges she faced when trying to understand that different foods have different nutritional values and how difficult it was to understand how seemingly similar foods might have entirely different nutrients. She might also remember that the food plate relevant to students only after they understand these foundational concepts.

2.   Teach Students about the Concept Development Model

Although many students proceed through the concept development model steps without any problems (as long as the teacher provides guidance and good questioning). Teachers should first practice the concept development model with students before teaching concepts with it. Alternatively, teachers could provide their students with an outline of the steps of the model and question =s to consider for each steps.

One way to introduce the concept development model is to explore a common concept—the concept of “our class”. Teachers might use individual students as “items” that are listed. She would write each students’ name on a sticky note. Without making her grouping explicit. She would organize the notes into grouping—one of boys and one of girls (by gender). As they watch their teacher grouping, students are challenged to identify the reason for grouping and suggest labels for the groups. Then the teacher might regroup the notes with the students’ names by age and challenge students to make a generalization based on these groupings. A statement like “our class consists of boys and girls who ore ages 8 and 9” would be a generalization that describes the concept of “our class”.

Scaffold Students’ Learning and Metacognition

           Although the concept development model is an open—ended model of teaching. It will be successful only if teachers provide the appropriate amount of time required for learning and sufficient scaffolding of students through questioning and application activities, as the following sections described:

TIME: THE AMOUNT OF TIME DEVOTED TO IMPLEMENTING A CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT MODEL LESSON WILL STRONGLY INFLUENCE ITS SUCCESS.

         Teachers who use the concepts development model must recognize that teaching thinking and practicing thinking takes time. A concept development model lesson might take several class periods or a whole scheduled block to complete. Concept being explored should be of significant importance to justify these time requirements. Additional considerations should be made to ensure that the lesson does not take up too much time—that is not overkill. Otherwise, students will lose interest or become fatigued. Determining the right amount of time requires for a lesson may take some trial and error. It also requires paying close attention to how students work through the lesson. If students start to lose interest during the lesson. It may be best to move to another lesson or activity and return to the concept development model lesson another day.

QUESTIONING: TEACHERS SHOULD PLAN WHICH QUESTION THEY WILL ASK DURING EACH STEP OF THE CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT MODEL IN ADVANCE.

           Although they will also likely ask other questions, during the lesson, developing a list of probing questions related to each steps’ purpose will better facilitate student thinking during each steps. Taba et al. (1971) crafted generic question for each step that teachers should ask:

1.   Listing: “What do you see (notice, find) here?”

2.   Grouping: “Do any of these items seem to belong together? Why would you group them together?”

3.   Labeling: “What would you call these groups you have formed?”

4.   Regrouping: “Could some of these belong in more than one group? Can we put these same items in different group? Why would you group them that way?”

5.   Synthesizing: “Can someone say in one sentence something about all these groups?”

           For an example of questions a teacher might ask students during each step. Review the concept development model lesson.

APLICATION ACTIVITIES

           Taba explicitly developed the concept development model to include support for student thinking through its five steps. Even so, how these steps are implemented in open ended. The three main considerations teachers must make related to scaffolding students’ learning is to determine (1)which tool(s) students will use to list, group, regroup, and label their items related to the concept being studied: (2) how students will be grouped during all of our steps (e.g., whole group, pairs, heterogeneous, and so on): and (3) how teacher will structure students’ analysis of the items listed, grouped, labeled, and regrouped. In the concept development model lesson, for instance, the teacher asks students to list their ideas in pairs using Kidspiration, a concept-mapping program. However, students can also list their ideas individually, in pairs, or in small groups using a piece f paper, a dry-erase board, or technology tools (see the section on “What Value Does Technology Add” later in this chapter for examples of technology tools a teacher might use).