At the end of January, I used the tool of concept mapping within my G11 classes. Did it work? Was it successful? Perhaps it is a little too early to judge, however we have witnessed a shift of focus within students’ work from regurgitating key studies to explanations of concepts using research to support this. But a few one-off activities does not necessarily mean that they are thinking conceptually.

This week I attended a professional development session on Concept Based Teaching and Learning to gain a greater insight into the background theory of conceptual learning. Afterwards, I left with a large array of thoughts and ideas and I thought it would be helpful to dedicate a post to my reflection on the fundamental points I have taken away. I will then explore each key aspect at a later date in more depth and what this means for teaching and learning in Psychology to help encourage a long-term development plan to incorporating concept based curriculum and instruction into my everyday practise.

  1. Psychology can be considered in terms of Structure of Knowledge and Structure of Process

As a humanities subject, Psychology is often construed as a high content course with many facts that students are required to ‘know’ or arguably ‘memorise’. However, when looking into Erickson (1995) and Lanning (2012), Psychology is a direct simultaneous use of both these structures.

2. ‘Telling’ as a strategy is widely debated with its use in Concept Based Teaching and Learning.

Whilst we often have a temptation of ‘Telling’ students the over-arching concepts to assist with them organising their knowledge as suggested by Ausbel, this may contradict the purpose and opportunity in which students are able to make these connections themselves.

 

3. Psychology makes use of Inductive and Abductive Inferences to develop conclusions

In Psychology, the conclusions that we develop are tentative so abductive inferences are made. This means that we lead away from the evidence by asking questions to create a judgement about behaviour. Arguably, Psychology also applies inductive logic through attempting to establish cause and effect relationships between two variables to explain behaviour.

References:

Triple A Plus Learning (2018). East Leadership Team with Stuart MacAlpine, EAST Campus UWCSEA and SKY SCHOOL.

Lanning, L. (2016). What you need to know about the structure of process [online]. Available from: http://corwin-connect.com/2016/11/need-know-structure-process/ (02/05/18).

#conceptbasedteachingandlearning #conceptbasedcurriculum