Concepts

The notion (or concept!) of ‘concept’ is a central idea in theories about learning and conceptual [sic] development.

There are different models of what concepts are.

At one level they act as categories - to have a concept of bird (or theory or …), means having a means to recognise something as being, or not being, or being somewhat, a bird (or theory or …)

Some see concepts as in principle being capable of definition in terms of defining characteristics (a bird has feathers, lays eggs, etc) and consider concepts to be hierarchical (as did Kelly in his theory of personal ‘constructs’).

Sometimes concepts are considered to work with prototypes - so a person has a notion of a ‘typical’ bird that acts as prototype for their bird concepts, such that perhaps sparrow, robin and blackbird seem very close to their prototype, but emu and owl has less similarity to the prototype and bats and pterodactyls may be considered somewhat bird-like. Such concepts may be considered ‘fuzzy’ as they do not have the sharp boundaries that a list of essential characteristics provide.

Conceptual structure

Sometimes concepts are considered to be embedded within networks of concepts, and to take their meaning form all the associations. Such networks may be complex, and concepts

This way of thinking about concepts suggests that concept mapping is an appropriate technique to explore someone’s conceptual structure. This suggests that concepts are explicit and open to introspection.

Some views concepts as more actional - as better understood in terms of how we act towards things. (Such concepts may be tacit in nature - only revealed by our behaviour).

Concept or conceptions?

Sometime concepts are seen as World 3 objects (a lå Plato, Popper) in that they are components of scientific theories and the like, which have an existence independent independent of the physical world (World 1) or people’s subjective experiential worlds (World 2).

Constructivist thinking suggests each person has to construct their own knowledge of the world through personal experience (including interpreting what others tell us). In this case the concepts that people develop are idiosyncratic, and should not be equated to the world 3 concepts. Sometimes the term conception (or personal construct) is used for a person’s personal conceptualising.

Melded concepts / conceptions

Vygotsky’s theory of conceptual development see people’s conceptions as melded concepts or melded conceptions - as evolving form the interaction of two sources of knowledge.

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