concept attainment model

CONCEPT ATTAINMENT

Background

It seems that most of what we do in science is categorize or classify objects or events for the purpose of generalizing.  To do this, scientists must observe carefully.  Although scientists are certainly not the only people who classify, scientists often classify in different ways than the rest of us do.  Note that there is nothing about the ways in which scientists classify that is better than the ways others classify.  It is a different way, not better.  However, in science class, we want the students to learn to classify in similar ways to scientists.  We want them to be familiar with science categories so they can follow a scientific conversation – at least a little bit.  We want them to be able to read a newspaper science article and understand what they have read.  Better yet, they would be able to guess at some of the mistakes the journalist has made in interpreting what the scientists have learned.  Even better, they might also be able to critique the conclusions that scientists themselves have made.

A concept attainment method involves students learning to classify a set of objects or events in a way that scientists classify.  The students will be using the categories that scientists use, and will be attempting to determine the rationale behind the categories.

The Concept Attainment Method has a high tolerance for ambiguity.  This means that the students might seem to be following the wrong path, but eventually, they will come up with the expected answer.  You would use this method when the concept the students are expected to learn is fairly clear.  You would use this method instead of just telling the students or having them read, because students will learn the material much better when they figure it out for themselves.  As your students learn more about the classification, you will also learn more about it.  As well as learning the material better, and remembering it longer, the students will learn how to learn by using this model.  We want students to become independent learners and critical thinkers.  This method will help them with both these goals.

This method 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 might also 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 your students sets of materials that have been classified.  You also tell them the names of the categories.  For example, you could give your students fifteen rocks, and organized into three groups:  five sedimentary rocks, five igneous, five metamorphic.
• Tell the students to find the characteristics that members of one group have in common that are different than the characteristics of members of other groups.  In other words, they should try to figure out why the five sedimentary rocks have been put in one group, and why the five metamorphic rocks have been put in a different group than the sedimentary rocks.  Etc.
• 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 attaining their concepts, you will ask them to focus on these results.  For example, you might have them spill a little vinegar on their rock samples, you might have them hit their samples with another rock, etc.
• 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.  If there will be some danger in working with the materials, visualize what sorts of mistakes your students are likely to make.  Then warn them of the dangers in advance.

Carry out:

• The students study the materials, compare and contrast those that are in the same group and those that are in the different groups, attempting to determine the rationale that was used for the classification.  As the students are comparing and contrasting, they will develop different hypotheses, and will have opportunities to test their hypotheses by further examination of their materials, and by discussion in their small groups.
• 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 Ataking 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 (another student) said", or "I disagree with what (another student) said, because ..."  Encourage them also to speak tentatively with phrases such as "I thought" or "it seems".

• Put pairs of small groups together, so that if you originally had ten small groups of 3 students, you now have five small groups of six people.  The groups are to discuss their observations and the reasons they think the objects have been classified together.  Limit the time they will have for this discussion.  When their time is up, give them a limited amount of time to come up with a ten word (or twenty, whatever you think is appropriate) phrase to summarize what they think the rationale is for the classification scheme.  Tell the group that they should select one member to be the presentor.
• Have each of the larger groups present their results to the class.
• If your students have not come up with the rationale they should have, think of why they haven't.  What background knowledge were they lacking, or what background knowledge contributed in a non-science way?  What other materials might have helped them to form the concept you wanted them to form?

Check up:

• Once your students have come up with their rationales for the classification scheme, give them a sample which is not labelled.  They are to choose which category this non-labelled sample fits in, and explain why they have classified it with this group.
• You could then ask how many groups changed their categories.

Hints

• For this teaching model to work well, the teacher should ensure that the initial samples given to the students are the clearest possible prototypes.  In other words, if you had given the students samples of vertebrate animals:  mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, you would not give them whales and duckbilled platypuses amongst the mammals.  These mammals are not generally what is expected of mammals.  After the students have come up with the description of Abasic" mammals, then you could supply the exotic ones.
• Give the students time to develop their definitions of each category.  Do not interrupt them when their first hypotheses are wrong.  If you have set the model up correctly, the students will come up with the correct rationales eventually.

Examples of concept attainment models:

• Give your students pictures of animals which are classified as mammals, fish, reptiles, birds.  If you add skin samples to your selections, you could also include amphibians.
• Give your students a magnet, and let the magnet choose the materials which are magnetic and which are not, and then the students attempt to determine what the qualities of magnetic materials are vs. non-magnetic.
• Any two or more categories, and science is full of them, will be appropriate.