Concepts are the basic building blocks around which people organize their thinking and communication.
Concept learning and logical thinking are critical goals for almost everything taught in schools. These become important scaffolding for building student understanding of school subjects. Concept learning is essentially a process of putting things into classes or categories.
The instructional goals of concept teaching are mainly to help learners acquire conceptual understandings of the subjects they are studying and to provide a foundation for higher-level thinking.
The general flow or syntax of a concept lesson consists of four major phases: present goals and establish set, provide examples and nonexamples, test for concept attainment, and analyze student thinking processes.
Concept teaching requires a moderately structured learning environment.
Theoretical and Empirical Support
The theoretical and empirical support for concept teaching and learning is very extensive and covers a wide range of topics. Studies have shown how age and intellectual development influence readiness to learn concepts. Piaget's and Bruner's developmental theories are of particular importance to concept teaching and learning.
A concept's critical attributes help define and distinguish it from other concepts. The various kinds of concepts include conjunctive concepts, disjunctive concepts, and relationship concepts. Students grasp general concepts mainly by being presented with specific examples and nonexamples of the concept.
Studies have also shown how examples and nonexamples should be presented to maximize student learning and how teachers can use such specific practices as visual images and graphic organizers to support concept learning.
Planning and Conducting Concept Lessons
Planning tasks for concept lessons include selecting concepts and choosing the most appropriate approach.
There are several different approaches to teaching concepts. Two of the most prevalent are direct presentation and concept attainment. In direct presentation, the teacher labels and defines the concept early in the lesson and then presents the best examples and nonexamples of a particular concept but does not define and label the concept until the end of the lesson.
Concept analysis, selection of examples and nonexamples, and decisions regarding the sequence in which to present the examples are also important tasks teachers must perform during planning for a concept lesson.
A concept lesson begins with the teacher telling students what the aims for the lesson are and getting them motivated and ready to learn.
The exact sequencing for defining and labeling a concept and presenting examples and nonexamples varies according to the approach being used by the teacher. In direct presentation, the teacher presents the definition first, whereas in concept attainment, the teacher presents examples and nonexamples first and students discover and define the concept using an inductive process.
Through questioning and discussion, teachers help students analyze their thinking processes and integrate new learning with old as the final phase of a concept lesson, regardless of approach.
Managing the Learning Environment
During the presentation and attainment phases of a concept lesson, the teacher maintains a structured learning environment. However, the final phases of a concept lesson encourages student interaction and require a more flexible, student-centered learning environment.
Assessment and Evaluation
As with other instructional models, the major post-instructional task is for teachers to match their testing programs to the model's particular goals.
When evaluating students' understanding of a concept, it is important to ask students to do more than merely define the concept. Students should also be asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the concepts critical attributes and its relationship to other concepts.
