Concept Formation

Teaching Method

Concept Formation

CONCEPT FORMATION

Background

You would choose for your students to do a concept formation activity if it didn't matter very much if they came up with the same concept as scientists or not (if you were mostly interested in their thinking), or if the science concepts would almost certainly be formed. In other words, you would use it when the particular concept didnt really matter, or when the results would be relatively unambiguous. This is a good model to use to help students understand how much we classify in our regular lives, and how there are different rationales for different classifications.

The purpose of concept formation as a teaching strategy is to have your students examine carefully some objects, and to think about a method for classifying the objects. Both observation and classification are important in science. Indeed, the more carefully your students observe, the more interesting the questions they will come up with. And, as will be / was discussed for concept attainment activities, the ways in which scientists classify are unique - often very different than the ways in which we classify in our daily lives. The science classification methods are not superior to everyday classification - just different. However, our students should learn how it is that scientists classify, so that they can have a better idea of what two scientists are talking about, or can read a newspaper science article intelligently.

Another point is that different kinds of scientists classify differently. This model could be useful for pointing out some of the different classification schemes in different sciences. For example, in biology, peanuts are considered a bean, not a nut. However, for medical doctors, people who are allergic to peanuts are often allergic to nuts, and are rarely allergic to beans. Therefore, the plant taxonomist's classification scheme is useless for a medical researcher.

This model encourages certain of the Common Essential Learnings. The most obvious are critical and creative thinking, communication, and of course, independent learning. Personal and social values and skills might be included if you help your students work in a positive way with their peers. As well, if the particular concept involves mathematical relationships, the students could use their numeracy. If the particular concept involves understanding a technology, technological literacy will be addressed. Of course, as the students classify in the ways that scientists do, they will be learning a technique of science, and understanding techniques can be part of technological literacy.

Practicalities

Set up:

Give the students a number of materials. These might be written, they might be "thoughts" (tell them to think of different animals for example), or they might be real things. It is preferable to have the students work with real things.
Tell the students to classify the materials in a way that makes sense. If you would like your students to focus on a particular aspect of the materials, tell them to focus on this aspect.
You might or might not have activities for the students to do with the materials so the students will study them in different ways. If you want them to focus on the results of these activities for forming their concepts, you will ask them to focus on these results.
You will probably put your students into small groups. Choose groups so they will work effectively together.
If you wish to minimize your supervisory role, choose materials that are relatively safe to work with.

Carry out:

The students study the materials and organize them according to some sort of rationale. They make their rationale explicit to their peers. Their rationales could be considered hypotheses for why some materials belong together and others do not.
The teacher's role at this stage is to meander through the classroom, observing the students at work. You will act as referee and coach. If students are hesitant about "taking initiative", or if they are not testing the materials in a way in which they could, you might encourage them to go on with more tests.
During this time, you could make anecdotal records, or fill in checklists of student actions.

Debrief:

For every teaching strategy involving a debrief, I will suggest a different method. There are a number of ways in which debriefs can be done. Please mix and match the different forms of debriefs you use. In all large group (six or more students), encourage your students to use their conversation skills. (Don't overteach this, though. Tell them only once or twice in the year. Remind them only when you see that they are really forgetting. ) Their conversational skills are to listen carefully to what other speakers say. Then when they talk, they build on what others have said, and demonstrate this by using phrases such as "What I think is similar to what . . . said" , or "I disagree with what . . . said, because . . . " Encourage them also to speak tentatively with phrases such as "I thought" or "it seems".

Have each group of students explain their rationales for the classification systems.
Draw attention to the different ways in which students classify if this is the purpose of the activity.
Draw attention to the diverse observations - different groups will have observed different aspects of the same objects.
If you expected your students to form a particular concept, and they haven't, think of why they wouldn't have. What background knowledge were they lacking, or what background knowledge contributed in a non-science way?Ê What other materials might have helped them to form the concept you wanted them to form?

Final Check:

Once the students have organized their materials, give them one or more extras and ask them to fit these in with the groups they have. This is a way for them to test their hypothetical categories. If they can fit the new materials in to the concepts they already have, then they should be content with the concepts they formed. (Until some time in the future when they find a material that won't fit the scheme!).

Hints:

During the debrief, you will learn the students' conceptions, and determine in what ways you can improve their learning - improve their moving towards the conception accepted by science (if this was your goal). It is during the debrief that you will decide what extra tests the students should carry out, or what extra materials to supply for the last stage, the final check. The next time you do this lesson, it will be perfect.

Examples of Concept Formation models:

Give your students twenty different kinds of seeds, a scalpel for dissecting them, and a hand lens for observing them. Ask them to classify the seeds into groups, and to be explicit about the rationale they are using. Give your students six to ten different chemicals which are either acidic, basic, or neutral. Give them materials for testing these chemicals, such as purple cabbage water and turmeric stained paper. Have them also react all possible pairs of the chemicals. Then ask them to come up with a rationale for classifying the six to ten different chemicals into three groups. They should consider the results of all the tests they conducted. Have your students build play dough scale models of the planets, and to research and write descriptions of each planet. Then they are to classify the planets considering at least two different factors. (In other words, the two different factors must put the planets into the same groups. For example, if your students were to use the factors of size and distance from the sun, there would be three groups - the four small and close planets, the four large and distant planets, and Pluto in a category of its own. )

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