Concept Development Model: Analyzing the Relationships Between Parts of a Concept

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Concept Development ModelAnalyzing the
Relationships Between Parts of a Concept

• Dawn Hawkins

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History

• Hilda Taba created the Concept Development
  Strategy in 1971.
• The strategy was developed based on the
  assumption that people file information
  internally through categorizing the information
  in their minds.

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Key Points

• The natural thought process is mirrored by
  Concept Development.
• A person who is more practiced in defining
  concepts of simple objects will be better able to
  define concepts of more complex objects.
• People do not simply understand upon first
  exposure to a concept, the understanding needs to
  be built through multiple exposures to that same
  concept.

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The Steps

• List as many items as possible that are
  associated with the subject.
• Group the items because they are alike in some
  way.
• Label the groups by defining the reasons for
  grouping.
• Regroup and subsume individual items or whole
  groups under other groups.
• Synthesize the information by summarizing the
  data and forming generalizations.
• Evaluate students progress by assessing their
  ability to generalize a wide variety of items and
  to group those items flexibly.

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List as many items as possible

• Teacher Have you ever seen, or read about
  volcanoes? Tell me all the words you can think of
  that tell about volcanoes.
• Teacher writes each item on the board, or on
  separate slips of paper.

• Students
• hot
• red
• rocky
• smoky
• brown
• lava
• cone
• green
• ash
• magma
• vent
• chamber
• dangerous
• scary
• under-water
• islands

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Group items

• Teacher Look at the list of items we have
  created on the board, do you see any items that
  go together?
• Arrange the items into groups.

• Students
• brown, red, green go together
• cone, vent, chamber go together
• hot, smoky, ash go together
• lava and magma
• rocky, islands, under-water go together to!
• dangerous and scary

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Label groups and define reasons

• Teacher Now lets label our groups, think of a
  name that describes each group.
• Why did you choose that name for your group?

• Students
• Colors brown, red, green are colors.
• Parts of a Volcano cone, vent, chamber are
  volcano parts.
• Fire hot, smoky, ash fire makes all of these.
• Volcano Stuff lava and magma, this is the stuff
  inside the volcano.
• Geography rocky, islands, under-water these are
  land formations.
• Bad Stuff dangerous and scary volcanoes are not
  good.

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Regroup and define why

• Teacher Can some of these items belong to more
  than one group? Are there different groups we
  can create from the items on this list?
• Now that you have regrouped the items can you
  think of other worlds that can describe volcanoes
  no in one of our groups?

• Students
• Active Volcano brown, red, rocky, dangerous,
  scary, islands, under-water, lava, magma, hot,
  smoky, ash, chamber, cone, vent .
• Dormant Volcano green, rocky, islands, ash,
  cone, vent.
• Students
• Active Volcanoes also have lava flows, quakes,
  destroy land.
• Dormant Volcano have beautiful flowers, might
  have caves, form new land.

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Summarize and Generalize

• Teacher Is there one sentence that you can say
  about all the groups we put together today?

• Students Volcanoes are big and scary sometimes,
  but can also be beautiful, they can be
  under-water or on land and create or destroy land
  with lava and smoke.

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Assess Students

• A teacher can assess students understanding of
  Concept Development by observing whether the
  students use the approach when working with other
  subject matter.
• Working with the Concept Development model often
  with instructional groups will lead to students
  more readily using this model when working
  independently.
• It is suggested by Gunter, Estes and Schwabb that
  assessing should not be done based on a grade but
  simply as an observation.

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Conclusions

• Higher-order thinking is used when listing,
  grouping, sorting and summarizing.
• Children are encouraged to think for themselves
  through this process.
• Process uses creativity, an essential element to
  be successful in todays world.
• Helps children create building blocks and
  identify patterns.

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Eisner Connection

• Cognitive Pluralism
• Humans have the capacity to create and manipulate
  symbols.
• A cognition of how to communicate opens doors in
  all areas of communication (Mathematics, Art,
  History, Science, etc.).

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My Thoughts

• I chose to evaluate the model of Concept
  Development since it is the model that I most
  identify with.
• I strive to create lessons in which the students
  are actively involved in creating the concepts
  that we are discussing.
• I prefer to be a facilitator of information
  gathering rather than an imparter of knowledge.
  This model lends itself to that thought.

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References

• Eisner, E.W. (2002). The Educational Imagination
  On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs
  (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ Merrill
  Prentice Hall.
• Gunter, M.A., Estes, T.H., Schwab, J. (2002).
  Instruction A Models Approach (4th ed.). Boston,
  MA AllynBacon.
• Taba, H., Durkin, M.C., Fraenkel, J.R.
  McNaughton, A.H (1971). A Teachers Handbook to
  Elementary Social Studies (2nd ed.). New York,
  NY Addison-Wesley Publishing.