It is essential to understand the issues that impact student learning and to apply that knowledge as an educator. The understanding gained will guide my teaching, allow me to effectively design instruction, and help me to create optimal learning environments for students.
In “Learners in Context” class at SPU, we study educational theories and issues. Topics of study include the grand debate surrounding Nature vs. Nurture, Piaget’s theories, Constructivist approaches, moral reasoning, cognitive conflict and disequilibrium, and brain theory, in particular, as it pertains to learning (Medina, 2008). I will take a look at the theory of teaching concepts and their impact on learning. It is interesting to compare and contrast the ideas and find that many of the theories and approaches overlap. For example, in many ways, the tenets for teaching concepts are similar to the alternative constructivist models.
During our online discussions, we have the opportunity to practice some of the approaches we are learning including allowing time for reflection, rethinking, changing perspective and analysis. As we map our brains with the ideas, we are learning in a deeper, more rigorous manner. We are developing our own concepts for teaching. Pressley and McCormick write: “Our conceptual understandings are related to each other in long-term memory and are stored in what are called semantic nodes. Concepts are nodes in the network, with links between the nodes specifying associations between concepts” (Pressley & McCormick, 2007, p. 109). We are beginning to understand that memory is developed and enhanced by creating associations between concepts. From Medina (2008), we know that experts’ knowledge is organized around core concepts or ‘big ideas’ that guide their thinking about their domains.
The following post discusses the importance of using concepts in the classroom:
Author: Megan McGinnis Date: Monday, July 13, 2015 5:09:23 PM PDT Subject: Question 1 Response
“Teaching concepts is important because as Pressley & McCormick state, “ [they] help us to organize our experiences by allowing us to group similar things together into categories” (Pressley & McCormick, 2007, p. 107). Concepts are modes of organizing different experiences so that we remember and make sense of the world around us.
Approaches to teaching concepts include direct explanation, discovery, and guided discovery (Pressley & McCormick, 2007, p. 111). While I think each of these approaches are important and should be utilized when appropriate, as a future high school English Language Arts teacher, I’m drawn most to guided discovery approach. I think it’s important to encourage student discovery. In this way, students have the opportunity to independently process concepts in ways they will retain. However, I also think that questions prompted by the teacher to guide students in their discovery can be equally important to help students feel on track and in a safe learning environment.”
Here is one example of how the concept approach works in the classroom:
Author: Kati Tremayne Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 8:54:55 AM PDT Subject: Teaching concepts
Teaching concepts is an essential part of any lesson because it helps students understand a topic or idea in a larger context…..One excellent example of this comes from my Spanish II course. During this year of study students learn to give informal, singular commands in Spanish. (e.g. ¡Ven! – Come!, ¡Toma! – Take!) There is a specific method for memorizing the formation of regular, informal commands using grammatical steps with which students are already familiar. Likewise, there is a list of irregular, informal commands that – through elaboration and repetition – is easy to memorize. Thus, neither the regular nor the irregular informal commands present too significant a challenge to learn academically. However, if the students never are helped to understand that these procedures lead to the creation of commands, or if they never fully grasp what exactly a command is, then they will never have a thorough understanding of the concept. Several ways that incorporate the concept “command” are through analysis of the purpose of commands, discussion of commands used both in Spanish and English in and outside of the classroom, and listening to authentic examples in native Spanish-speaking contexts. As Pressley and McCormick note on page 107, children excel at taking note of the essential characteristics of things and also at learning commonly encountered content. Therefore, by presenting them information that is all around them, accessible and familiar they are able to better grasp the nature of commands, and ultimately understand at a deeper level how and why to form them in the target language.
Ed-Eureka! 