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Chapter 2

Concept Attainment

Zero and absolute zero—these are complicated concepts to master for young learners and old learners alike. To help them, effective teachers continually seek ways to make connections among relevant concepts. Grouping, organizing, categorizing, sense making—in essence, developing concepts for understanding the world—are critical aspects of learning for all students, and effective teachers understand the importance of concept building for any subject and in any context.

A concept can be defined as “a set of specific objects, symbols, or events that are grouped together or categorized on the basis of shared characteristics, called attributes” (Holt & Kysilka, 2006, p. 309), so one can think of concepts as the building blocks of education. An effective teacher aims virtually everything he or she does at developing student understanding of a concept and then applying and building on those concepts. In that vein, this chapter explores concept attainment as an instructional method to help students develop skills for inductive and deductive thinking while learning subject matter in a constructive and meaningful way.

What Research Says About Concept Attainment

The research interest on concept attainment started in the 1980s. Robert Tennyson and Martin Cocchiarella (1986) find that concept attainment not only helps students learn subject content but also helps them acquire procedural knowledge and metacognitive skills. Specifically, they summarize the following four methods of research-based teaching concepts.

1. Definition: Provide or develop a rule or generality that verbally states the structure of the critical attributes. (Example: Provide the best examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock, and provide direct definitions.)

2. Expository instances: Present and explain how to systematically classify examples and non-examples according to variable attributes, thereby making statements to elaborate on the concept. (Example: Explicitly direct students to compare and contrast the examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock.)

3. Interrogatory instances: Use questioning to encourage a compare and contrast approach, direct students to identify examples and non-examples, and have them make inferences about the concept by themselves. (Example: Prompt students to categorize the rocks into igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic groupings based on their knowledge of best examples.)

4. Attribute elaboration: Encourage analysis of the critical attributes in expository instances and feedback on the critical attributes in interrogatory instances. (Example: Focus students’ attention in a given example, say metamorphic rock, on its specific and unique characteristics, such as texture.)

Similarly, Ok-Choon Park (1984) examines the effectiveness of two concept-teaching strategies.

1. Classical-attribute-identification strategy: Facilitate the identification process of critical attributes of a concept. (Example: Use an analytically organized list of critical attributes of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock.)

2. Example-comparison strategy: Facilitate the formation and elaboration process of a prototype concept. (Example: Guide students to compare and contrast examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock.)

Park’s (1984) findings indicate that students who use the classical-attribute-identification strategy have more on-task engagement time and better learning performance during instruction than those using the example-comparison strategy, but the former students require more time to complete the instructional unit. The findings also show that students using the example-comparison strategy have better learning performance after instruction and exhibit better prototype memory formation, which results in a higher degree of retention. Thus, Park (1984) suggests that incorporating both strategies into concept instruction might lead to optimal student learning results. We echo this recommendation.

Studies also find that concept attainment is effective in improving meaningful acquisition of concepts. For instance, a 2013 study by Amit Kumar and Madhu Mathur notes that students instructed with concept attainment outperform those who do not use a formal concept approach (by a mean score of 85.60 versus 65.57) in acquisition of physics concepts. Another study (Fox & Sullivan, 2007) finds that students who practice classification of examples and non-examples are better at identifying new instances of the abstract concepts than students who do not.

There are still other studies that focus on the impact of incorrect examples on student concept learning. For instance, Tim Heemsoth and Aiso Heinze (2014) find that high-achieving sixth-grade students could benefit from incorrect examples when learning the concept of fractions; however, students with low prior achievement learned more from correct examples. In many cases, it is easy to explain why a correct answer is correct, while explaining why an answer is incorrect forces students to confront the inadequacies of the solution. Students of low prior knowledge may find this cognitive process demanding and may demonstrate just as many misconceptions as being exposed to correct examples. However, another study finds that comparing correct and incorrect examples is beneficial for students with low prior learning, even in early stages of the learning process (Durkin & Rittle-Johnson, 2012). After all, it is natural for students to have misconceptions as they learn, and one powerful way to teach them is to find the errors in their thinking and apply meaningful learning strategies to address those errors (Gür & Barak, 2007).

How to Move From Research to Practice

Teachers can use concept attainment to help students inductively develop an abstract, generic idea by using pattern recognition and categorizing skills and then deductively apply the concept in new situations (Pritchard, 1994). More specifically, the strategy, as proposed by Jerome Bruner, aims to build understanding of a concept; it is not only concerned with what a concept is but also the process of how it is acquired (as cited in Boulware & Crow, 2008), and students explore examples as well as non-examples of a concept. By using inductive reasoning, teachers encourage students to apply the attributes to analyze other similar and dissimilar examples before the concept is categorized or named (Boulware & Crow, 2008). Thus, concept attainment is “the search for and testing of attributes that can be used to distinguish exemplars from nonexemplars of various categories” (Joyce, Weil, & Calhoun, 2004, p. 62). Overall, concept attainment is an excellent way to provide opportunities for students to practice inductive reasoning and improve their concept-building strategies.

Preparing to Incorporate Concept Attainment Into the Classroom

The concept attainment approach can nurture awareness of alternative perspectives, sensitivity to logical reasoning in communication, and a tolerance for ambiguity. Peter Martorella (1999) suggests a planning guide for teaching concepts.

To initiate the process of teaching a concept, you need to ask yourself several basic questions: Do educators and subject matter specialists suggest the concept be taught? Should a student receive systematic instruction in the concept, or is it more appropriately acquired through informal means? Is there a sufficient agreement on the critical attributes … to have a basis for designing instructions? Assuming answers are yes to these questions, you are ready to move on to the next phase of instructional planning using the following inventory:

1. What name is commonly applied to the concept? (Example: lake)

2. What is a statement of the concept’s rule or definition (the arrangement of its critical attributes)? (Example: body of water surrounded by land on all sides)

3. What are the essential characteristics of critical attributes of the concept based on your readings and reference sources? (Example: land, water, surroundings)

4. What are some noncritical attributes typically associated with the concept? (Example: size, location, depth)

5. What is an example that best or most clearly represents the most typical case of the concept? (Example: aerial photo clearly showing all the features of a lake)

6. What are some other interesting and learner-relevant examples of cases of the concept that you can use in its explanation? (Example: local lakes, mountain lakes, desert lakes)

7. What are some contrasting nonexamples of the concept that will help clarify and illustrate the concept? (Example: ocean, stream)

8. What are some cues, questions, or directions that you can employ to call attention to criteria attributes and noncriterial attributes in the concept examples? (Example: “Look at all the points where the water meets the land.”) (as cited in Holt & Kysilka, 2006, p. 311)

Teachers use these steps to facilitate the conceptual types of learning and to adjust how much control they delegate to the students based on what is needed in the learning. For instance, the process can be teacher directed as the teacher explicitly elaborates on the elements of a concept, or it can be student directed by giving students the control to explore and transfer the attainment activity to real-life settings.