Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2, October 2007 (Ó 2007) DOI: 10.1007/s10643-006-0112-0
Making the Case for a Conceptually Based Curriculum in Early Childhood Education Maria Birbili1,2
The purpose of this paper is to make the case for organising teaching and learning in early childhood education around concepts and generalisations rather than inert facts. It is now widely accepted that facts alone are not enough to help children discern patterns and relationships, group things together, see big ideas and solve problems. Facts need to be placed in a conceptual framework to be understood and remembered. Teachers can facilitate concept development by putting concepts and generalisations (rather than facts) at the centre of activities, providing children with a wide variety of tangible experiences, helping them learn how to observe and represent what they see and hear and providing them with multiple examples of the concepts being taught. KEY WORDS: early childhood education; curriculum; concepts; generalisations; concept formation.
frameworks and foster high level thinking such as, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Thus, instead of teaching children all the facts about plants or animals, teachers could help them see relations between different themes (e.g. plants and animals have life cycles that include being born, developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying), develop concepts (e.g. change, evolution, interrelationship etc.) and transfer their learning to new situations. One way to prepare children to deal with the above mentioned changes is to organise teaching and learning around concepts and generalisations, rather than the memorisation and recitation of factual information. In fact, today, it is well accepted that teaching for understanding is not about providing students ‘‘countless loosely related facts and figures to be memorised and soon forgotten’’ (Howard, 1987, p. 8) but with teaching them more ‘‘durable’’ knowledge, such as concepts and generalisations that have wider application in life (Wallen, Durkin, Fraenkel, McNaughton, & Sawin, 1969). Concept-centered curricula are based on the view that knowledge consists of concepts, main ideas and key facts while instruction should aim at teaching children transferable concepts, specific topic information (which constitutes the context in
FROM FACTS TO CONCEPTS In todayÕs world, where knowledge is increasing and changing rapidly, once undeniable facts are becoming obsolete and the multi-character of the student body is growing. Questions such as, ‘‘what is worth teaching’’ or ‘‘what are the fundamental knowledge, skills, ideas and attitudes that students need to have as members of a constantly changing society’’ are becoming critical in organising teaching and learning. Stated in a different way, todayÕs educational systems are faced with the challenge of teaching children to be able to identify important ideas, see patterns and relationships, make links and connections, and solve problems. Clearly, such goals imply that teachers have to move from teaching multiple isolated facts to organising learning in ways that engage students in the active construction of conceptual
1
Department of Early Childhood Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Pirgos, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Maria Birbili, Department of Early Childhood Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Pirgos, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece., e-mail:
[email protected]
141 1082-3301/07/1000-0141/0 Ó 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
142 which concepts can be understood) and process skills which help students differentiate, synthesise and apply concepts to other contexts (Erickson, 1995, p. 76; The Hampshire Educational Collaborative, 2004). The advantages of planning the curriculum around key concepts and big ideas are many. First, a conceptual approach to teaching reduces the fragmented acquisition of knowledge—rather than seeing each new experience or knowledge as a separate category students are helped to identify similarities, discern patterns and relations, group things together and arrive at generalisations (Saskatchewan Education, 1999). Second, concept-based curricula emphasise and teach cognitive processes such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation that help the development of new and more complex concepts and take learning to a higher level. Third, planning learning experiences by key concepts and ideas establishes conceptual links between different curriculum areas. Due to their broad and abstract nature, many concepts can be found in several themes and topics and applied in different contexts. For example, ‘‘change’’ is a concept that permeates many themes and topics (e.g. plants, the weather, the human body, families etc.) and cuts across subjects such as social studies, science and literature. Erickson (1995) summarises the advantages of a concept-based approach to curriculum and instruction as follows: ‘‘under the older fact-based paradigm, depth of instruction meant teaching more facts about a topic. In the newer paradigm, depth of instruction means teaching higher level thinking related to a significant concept and theme, problem or issues by connecting ideas across disciplines to extend understanding, find answers, foster generalisations and create new knowledge...’’ So are facts useless or unimportant? On the contrary. As Donovan and Bransford (2005, p. 6) put it, ‘‘competent performance is built on neither factual nor conceptual understanding alone’’. More specifically, facts are central to the development, shaping and understanding of concepts and generalisations not only because they make them meaningful and memorable by providing the ‘‘supporting detail’’ (Jarolimek, 1990, p. 35), but mainly because they are necessary for their development—concepts and generalisations emerge as we classify or categorise facts. In addition, some facts are also valuable to know in and of themselves such as, for example, who wrote an all-time classic, or who invented an important device. (Jacobsen, Eggen & Kauchak, 1999, p. 51). However,
Birbili teaching mere facts has a number of drawbacks: First, as Taba (1962, p. 175) puts it, their role in the learning process is ‘‘a fleeting one... the facts of today easily become the fiction of tomorrow’’. Second, unlike concepts and generalisations, facts by their nature are of limited transfer and predictive value (Kucer, Silva, & Delgado-Larocco, 1995). Moreover, teaching only facts keeps childrenÕs thought processes at the lowest cognitive level, namely memorisation. Memorising isolated facts is not only difficult, given their increasing number, but also can be confusing to the child. To serve their purpose as the basis for concept formation, facts should be selected carefully considering issues such as their use and importance in studentsÕ ordinary living and culture and the ‘‘durability’’ of their importance for a long period of time. More importantly however, facts should be chosen according to whether they illustrate, explain and help children understand the ideas and concepts teachers have chosen to teach (Jarolimek, 1990). Organising and prioritising facts around key concepts, or else placing them in a conceptual framework, allows not only for more effective application but also retrieval (Donovan & Bransford, 2005, p. 7). So the dilemma for teachers should not be ‘‘facts or concepts’’, because both are needed, but rather how to organise teaching and learning in ways that help students understand facts and use them to develop concepts and generalisations. The idea of structuring the curriculum around concepts and generalisations is not new (Seefeldt, 1989; Taba, 1962, 1966). However, research in teaching practices (Davis & Barnard, 2000; Lowe & Williamson, 1992) suggests that teachers of all grade levels find it difficult to move away from organising learning around facts. Perhaps this happens because facts are more easily taught and learned than any other educational outcome (Taba, 1962, p. 212). All that teachers need to do, as Seefeldt (1989, p. 116) says, is to decide what facts they want to teach, and then ‘‘try to relate them to something meaningful to the children, sequence them, and arrange for children to practice reciting and using them’’. Another reason behind teachersÕ reliance on facts might be the widespread assumption that wealth of facts is synonymous with intelligence. Or it might be because teachers simply replicate the kind of teaching and learning they have experienced. And whenever teachers teach well-defined mathematical or science concepts (e.g. ‘‘triangle’’ or ‘‘temperature’’) there is a question as to whether this practice is part of a conscious and systematic effort to teach students con-
Making the Case for a Conceptually Based Curriculum ceptual frameworks that they can use to make sense of and deal with the world (and not just single concepts), frameworks that also include more abstract concepts such as ‘‘change’’ or ‘‘interdependence’’. The argument here is that concept teaching must be built into planning learning experiences and be done in a systematic way, covering all curriculum subjects. CONCEPTS AND GENERALISATIONS Concepts are mental categories for objects, events, persons, places or ideas that have a common set of critical attributes. They can be concrete (e.g. cat, table, flower, tree) or abstract (e.g. justice, beauty), well-defined (e.g. ÔtriangleÕ) or ill-defined (‘‘goodness’’, ‘‘pleasure’’), physical, logico-mathematical or philosophical (Bolton, 1977; Howard, 1987). Concepts connect to each other in ‘‘a maze’’ of taxonomies, partonomies and other structures whereby concepts are related by class inclusion (e.g. armchair, chair, furniture) or by a part-whole relation (e.g. the eye or the nose are parts of the body) (Howard, 1987, p. 11). Two or more concepts put together form a generalisation (e.g. the weather affects the way people dress, work and play, streets are dangerous places to play, everyone has both rights and responsibilities. etc.). Concepts have very important functions (Ausubel, Novak, & Hanesian, 1978; Bolton, 1977; Howard, 1987; Seefeldt, 2005). First, they help reduce the amount of information people receive every day to manageable proportions by summarising, organising and categorising experiences ‘‘into meaningful wholes’’ (Howard, 1987, p. 1). If people were unable to sort their experiences into categories-concepts, memory would be filled with an enormous amount of information—objects, properties, sensations and events—too big to hold in memory (Gelman, 1999). Based on this fact, Seefeldt (1989, p. 117) rightfully argues that concepts serve like ‘‘mental filing cabinets’’. Concepts also allow people to communicate with each other, learn new concepts easily, make inferences and predictions about new experiences, solve problems and form conceptual relationships (generalisations). For example, understanding the concept ‘‘car’’ allows children Ôto categorise future experiences (examples and non-examples of the concept), act strategically when encountering new instances of the concept (e.g. be careful) and talk about their experiences to others. In contrast to facts, concepts change at a slower pace, cannot be forgotten, and they are both timeless and universal. In addition, as mentioned above, many concepts cut across
143 themes and curriculum areas, a fact which facilitates the integration of knowledge. Generalisations can be seen as the ‘‘big ideas’’ or the patterns or the Ôessential understandingsÕ (Erickson, 2002) that we want students to acquire. Like concepts, they help people to better understand and organise the world around them and they can be removed from specific situations–examples and applied to new ones (McGuire, 1991). Generalisations are verbalised in the form of sentences, rather than in single words like concepts and are expressed as summarising statements about relationships and patterns in the world (Table I). Generalisations can be descriptive or correlational or state a cause-andeffect relationship (Jacobsen et al., 1999; Jarolimek, 1990). According to Banks 1991), they could also be categorised as lower-level, intermediate-level and universal-level, depending on the degree of their applicability through time and across cultures (as cited in Erickson, 1995, p. 85). A CONCEPT-BASED APPROACH TO THE EARLY CHILDHOOD CURRICULUM What does adopting a concept-based approach to early childhood education mean? First, it means putting concepts rather than facts at the centre of the curriculum and building concept teaching into planning. In other words, early childhood teachers should move beyond teaching factual information to organising learning around the big ideas—concepts and generalisations—that stand behind topics. Such a practice in turn involves moving from an activitycentered curriculum to making concepts and generalisations Ôthe sieveÕ through which all activities and materials are filtered (Kucer et al., 1995, p. 35). Within this context, ‘‘lessons and activities are designed to help students understand the concepts and generalisations already identified, encourage them to Table I. Generalisations Change is the process of becoming different Seasons change throughout the year Numbers can be used to convey important information Symbols communicate specific information A globe is a model of the Earth People need each other People, animals and machines make sounds Living things are alike in some ways and different in other ways We can learn about the natural world using our senses We use different systems of measurement for different purpose Sources: Saskatchewan Education (1990); University of California, (2004)
144 identify additional concepts and arrive at new generalisations’’ (Kucer et al., 1995, p. 35). In the same vein, topics are used as a tool for concept development and not as an end in themselves. So for example, when exploring the ‘‘weather’’, teachers should take children beyond factual information about the kind of clothes people wear in each season and how many kinds of weather we have and use the specific topic to explore (or illustrate) concepts such as, ‘‘change’’ or ‘‘cause/effect’’ and arrive at generalisations such as, ‘‘changes can be observed and recorded’’ or ‘‘seasonal changes affect peopleÕs activities’’. Teaching for conceptual development and understanding also means encouraging childrenÕs interactions with the environment in any way possible as it is only through the interaction with and exploration of the world around them that preschool children encounter concepts and learn new things. As Vygotsky (1987, p. 170) pointed out, ‘‘direct instruction in concepts is impossible. It is pedagogically fruitless. The teacher who attempts to use this approach achieves nothing but a mindless learning of words, an empty verbalism that simulates or imitates the presence of concepts in the child’’. Put in different words, in order to help children form concepts and generalisations we need to give them the opportunity to observe, touch, smell, taste, experiment, discover, take apart and put together again (Seefeldt, 2005). Concepts and generalisations cannot be memorised, they only develop out of experience and ‘‘whole body’’ involvement in activities. This is why first-hand experiences with real objects and people and use of models, illustrations, photos, pictures and videos that are of interest to and make sense to children are essential to concept learning (Jarolimek, 1990). In contrast, phenomena, times, objects, events or places (e.g. a trip to prehistoric times or the moon) that cannot be directly experienced in some way—or that are ‘‘psychologically remote’’, as Jarolimek (1990, p. 29) puts it—are mostly meaningless to young children. In order to learn from their experiences, teachers should help children develop certain fundamental skills. One of those is observation. Children need to learn to observe, as Lind (1999) says, Ôwith all their sensesÕ in order to be able note differences and commonalities among objects, events and situations and recognise that some belong together while others do not. Observing should be accompanied by opportunities to compare, contrast, and classify the information and the ideas that arise from it since concept acquisition involves relating what we see and storing it together in categories. Questions such as ‘‘How are those
Birbili like or different from each other?’’ or ‘‘What things belong together?’’ prompt children to pay attention to detail and find differences and similarities in ideas. This process helps children understand ideas and concepts more deeply and be able to transfer their knowledge to new situations. Although, children until the age of 6 are likely to group objects and events on the basis of the way things look rather than the class they belong, due to their level of cognitive maturity, ‘‘practice’’ in comparison and classification should start early. Observing should also be accompanied by opportunities to interpret and represent observations in a variety of ways (e.g., language, play, drawing etc). Representation and expression not only help children to clarify and organise in their mind what they have seen and experienced but they also allow professionals to discover childrenÕs existing knowledge and personal theories. The latter is particularly important for two reasons. First, it gives teachers the opportunity to refine, extend or modify the concepts children already have with relevant activities. Second, it allows teachers to help children move from using wide, general or incorrect terms (e.g., ‘‘the sun is going to bed’’) to using the exact terms of concepts (e.g., the sun is setting). Since words are the way in which concepts are stored and referenced later, knowing the right terms helps children to better talk about their experiences, label and classify what they see and communicate with others. On the whole, language plays an important role in the acquisition of concepts and concept teaching not only because even simple ‘‘naming’’ constitutes ‘‘a primitive (perceptual) or precategorical type of concept formation’’ (Gentner & Rattermann, 1991, p. 260) but also because some concepts (e.g. eternity, infinity, soul) can only be learned through language since no perceptible exemplars exist (Howard, 1987, p. 107). Finally, concept formation can be facilitated by giving children the opportunity to play, especially sociodramatic and constructive play. Both those types of play encourage cognitive development and concept formation (Moyles, 2002) and help children consolidate different concepts by experiencing and using them in play. CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR EFFECTIVE CONCEPT TEACHING AND LEARNING There are different ways of teaching concepts to children. The one that Howard (1987, p. 136) calls ‘‘the traditional procedure’’ involves analysing a
Making the Case for a Conceptually Based Curriculum concept into defining characteristics, presenting a set of exemplars and non-exemplars while pointing out the presence or absence of defining features in them and giving students practice at categorisation. As he points out, this approach is more appropriate for teaching well-defined concepts to students who are old enough to readily learn and use a set of characteristic features and who can assimilate the concept easily into their existing conceptual framework (Table II). Concepts can also be taught by a discovery method. This involves teaching from instances, and more specifically best-examples (or prototypes), rather than from a set of features. This usually means presenting students with highly typical exemplars (e.g. a square or a triangle), then present a number of examples and non-examples and finally, ask students to categorise them by comparing them to the ‘‘bestexample’’ (Table II). As Howard (1987, p. 155) notes, some concepts, especially those which have clear sets of characteristic features, are better taught as prototypes rather than as sets of defining features. Discriminating, categorising and generalising by reference to prototypes is a strategy that works well with young children (Howard, 1987). In another approach proposed by Hilda Taba (Taba, 1966; Wallen et al., 1969) the teacher, through questions, guides children from exploring and manipulating materials to stating what they observe (‘‘what do you see, hear or note?’’), to identifying commonalities and grouping things that belong together (‘‘do any of these objects seem to belong together? Why?’’), to labelling the groups they have formed (‘‘what do you call the groups you have formed?’’) and finally finding different ways in which the same items can be grouped (‘‘could some of those things belong in more than one group?’’). This is an approach to concept teaching whereby students are essentially those who identify examples and nonexamples based on their observations and under-
145 standing and form their own concepts (rather than acquire the concepts of someone else) (Wallen et al., 1969). The teacher is only asking the questions. Wallen et al. (1969, p. 17) call this strategy the ‘‘listing, grouping and labelling strategy’’. In choosing a strategy for teaching concepts a number of factors have to be taken into consideration. These include studentsÕ age and conceptual level, previous knowledge of and experience with the concept and the nature and characteristics of the concepts to be taught (e.g. whether they have clear defining features). In any case, whatever strategy they choose, teachers of young children should keep in mind the following: 1. As Vygotsky (1986, p. 152) notes, ‘‘the path from the first encounter with a new concept to the point where the concept and the corresponding word are fully appropriated by the child is long and complex’’. In other words, teachers need to know that concept development may be ‘‘a long, slow process taking much time and effort’’ (Howard, 1987, p. 123). The implications of VygotskyÕs words are twofold. First, teachers need to be aware that until a concept is fully developed, studentsÕ meanings for words are often quite different from the teacherÕs and therefore it is important to check the ‘‘progress’’ of the development of the concept. Second, teachers need to select a few key concepts on which to build objectives rather than trying to teach all possible concepts behind a topic. This gives students time to better understand and eventually internalise the concepts taught. Thus, for example, when exploring the idea of living together (either in families or communities) a teacher could choose to focus on the concepts of interdependence and/or conflict and leave for later (or the next grade level) other related to the topic concepts such as change, identity or democracy. 2. Teaching fundamental concepts before children are ready to learn can waste time and resources,
Table II. Two Strategies that can Facilitate Concept Formation 1. Assess studentsÕ prior knowledge about and experience with the concept. 2. Name concept and define (e.g. A recyclable item is...). 3. Make explicit the identifying characteristics. 4. Present examples and non-examples of the concept while pointing the presence or absence of defining features in them. 5. Test for concept understanding by presenting additional examples and non-examples and giving students practice at categorisation. 6. Have students provide their own examples and non-examples.
1. Assess studentsÕ prior knowledge about and experience with the concept. 2. Present a prototype (or else a highly typical exemplar) (e.g. a square). 3. Present a number of examples and non-examples (e.g. squares, triangles, ovals etc. 4. Ask students to categorise them by comparing them to the prototype. 5. Test for concept understanding by providing more examples and non-examples and giving students practice at categorisation.
146 lead to misconceptions and cause frustration in both learners and teachers (Howard, 1987). In fact, a mismatch between content and childrenÕs cognitive capacity level can hinder not only concept development but also childrenÕs willingness to learn. Young children need to start from concrete, basic-level, familiar concepts and only progressively be introduced to and taught more abstract and complex ones. Complex concepts, that is concepts that need a lot of information to be defined and involve many interrelated ideas, are difficult for young children to acquire and master (e.g. ‘‘water’’ is easier to understand than the ‘‘water cycle’’) because their capacity for creating and retaining connections between interrelated ideas has not yet developed. Moreover, because young children have difficulty seeing concepts as part of a taxonomy or partonomy it is best to teach basic-level concepts first and then proceed upwards and downwards. So for example, it is better to start from familiar, basic-level concepts such as table and chair and then move to the subordinate level ‘‘kitchen table’’ or ‘‘arm chair’’ and the superordinate level ‘‘furniture’’. 3. When planning for teaching concepts, childrenÕs prior knowledge and preconceptions should be exposed and carefully considered. Investigating childrenÕs pre-existing ideas first of all allows teachers to organise teaching in ways that challenge, reorganise or modify any conceptual misunderstandings. Knowing childrenÕs knowledge structures and experiences also helps educators connect new knowledge to existing knowledge in meaningful ways. As psychology suggests, arranging the conditions of learning so they accommodate new experiences to existing ideas helps students make better sense of new knowledge since pre-existing ideas provide ‘‘anchorage’’ for meaningful learning of new information (Ausubel et al., 1978, p. 57). 4. Another critical factor for teaching concepts and generalisations is to provide children with as many varied experiences, exemplars and materials involving the same concept as it is possible. As Ausubel et al. (1978, p. 113) explain, the recurrence of a concept in many different contexts ‘‘facilitates the abstraction of commonality, strengthens the generality and transferability of the resulting concept and endows it with greater stability’’. Within this context, citing single examples should be avoided whenever possible not only because it hinders generalisation but also because it can result in stereotypic knowledge or misconceptions (Kucer et al., 1995). For example, to help children understand that
Birbili symbols are used to communicate ideas, beliefs, values and cultures we should present them with several examples of symbols and their use in human communication: flags, maps, road signs, men and women symbol for restrooms, the handicap parking symbol, the recycle symbol, the peace sign, etc. Presenting children with a large number of instances also gives teachers the opportunity to measure childrenÕs success in mastering a concept: if children readily recognise the concept in new situations or are able to apply it across instances the teacher can accurately infer that a child has learned the specific concept. 5. As becomes obvious from the previous point, example selection is a critical component for concept formation (Saskatchewan Education, 1999). In fact, the value of examples in concept teaching and learning is well established in the research literature (Eggen & Kauchak, 2001; Tennyson & Cocchiarella, 1986). Initial examples—whether real exemplars or pictures—must strongly represent the conceptÕs critical features. Later, as studentsÕ perception and understanding of the critical attributes increases, examples and non-examples can gradually become less typical in order to help students learn the boundaries of some concepts. So for example, if we want children to form the generalisation that houses are built according to the resources available we should start by showing them pictures of houses from geographic regions that are sufficiently different to allow adequate contrast (e.g. the desert, the rainforest, the Antarctic) and then move on to less clear-cut examples such as houses in the city or different types of countryside. Or to return to the example of symbols, to help children understand the idea that symbols are a method of communication we should start with easily recognisable symbols that convey simple information such as the handicap parking symbol or sports symbols and then move on to more ‘‘complex’’ ones such as flags or the peace symbol that stand for ideas. 6. In concept formation, questioning becomes an important skill for teachers. Through questions such as, ‘‘What do you see?’’, ‘‘What did you hear?’’, ‘‘Do you remember when we discussed/went...?’’, ‘‘Where else did we see this happening?’’, ‘‘How is this alike or different from the problem we discussed during circle time?’’, ‘‘What things belong together?’’ or ‘‘Can you give an example of that?’’, the teacher guides children to observe carefully, reflect on what they see, identify similarities and differences, see relationships, group events, objects and situations, label them, discover patterns and eventually generalise. In other words,
Making the Case for a Conceptually Based Curriculum asking what Erickson (2002, p. 91) calls the ‘‘essential questions’’ teachers facilitate mental processing, guide childrenÕs thinking to a higher level and support concept development. Summarising the educatorÕs role in concept teaching, we could say that early childhood teachers can help children develop concepts through providing them with a wide variety of tangible experiences, getting to know what children already know, building on past knowledge and experiences, using contrasting examples, drawing childrenÕs attention to the differences and similarities between objects and contexts and encouraging them to express and communicate with others about their experiences. As children encounter new situations and have new experiences it is the teacher who can help them apply what they are learning from one situation to another and, in so doing, teach them knowledge that is meaningful and useful in daily life.
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