Conceptual Change and Social Constructivism Flashcards
Conceptual Change
learning that involves changing an existing conception (i.e. belief, idea or way of thinking)
- relates to Piaget’s notions of disequilibration and accommodation
- accommodation=conceptual change
concepts
set of objects, symbols, or events that share
- common characteristics
- critical attributes
- can be abstract or concrete
- help us organize the world around us (schemas or scripts)
concept learning
- involves forming representations to:
- identify attributes
- generalize to new examples
- discriminate examples from non-examples
learning concepts
- identifying both positive instances and negative instances
- differentiating defining features from correlational features and from irrelevant features
- learning definitions of concepts that relate it to other known concepts
- forming prototypes of a concept
learning concept dog example
positive instance: a dog negative instance: a raccoon undergeneralization: dogs that do not look like a dog overgeneralization: cow prototype: group of normal looking dog
personal theories/ experience based theories
- based on our experiences we construct and organize the information about how the world works
- not based on scientific research evidence
- they are coherent beliefs that describe cause and effect relationships in our world
- usually wrong or incomplete, but functional for the individual person
examples of personal theories
- trees grow around power lines
- clouds are sweating bc too hot
Why is it so hard to change?
- we interpret new information in a way that is consistent with our prior knowledge (assimilation)
- lack of cognitive conflict
- social environment supports our beliefs
-it requires learning and unlearning in an active way
how to teach for conceptual change
- acknowledge and reveal student’s prior conceptions
- help learners realize the gaps in their thinking and actively work to build new knowledge
Social Constructivism
- focuses on social and cultural learning through social interactions with others
- child is social not egocentric (opposite to Piaget)
- children’s learning begins well before starting school and occurs in formal and informal settings
** Lev Vygotsky- key theorist in social constructivism
Why do we do group work?
- reducing cognitive load
- explanation
- disagreement
sociocultural theory (social constructivism)
emphasizes. ..
- social and cultural forces that influence learning and development
- parents, teachers, peers and the community play crucial roles
- symbols and symbol systems are internalized by learnings and become their cognitive tools
Vygotsky and Piaget’s difference
- V: thinks that children are social and are very aware of the social mechanisms around them, communication is not symbolic (piaget) but a social and emotional connection then later on it becomes a symbol
- P: thought that children were egocentric and that communication is symbolic
Vygotsky’s view of language
- a lot of our learning is transmitted via physical and cognitive tools or cultural tools (ex: language, writing, books, artifacts)
- Language is one the most important cognitive tools and begins as communication between the individual and people in the environment and … eventually becomes an internal mental function
Internal Speech
- private speech: talking to yourself out loud (children, adults when facing new or challenging tasks)
- inner speech: talking to yourself inside your head (adults)
