The role of concepts in science teaching

Abstract

The present paper poses essential questions: What knowledge should students attain and what methods should be applied? The authors started up from cognitivistic view of cognition related to: (a) organizing knowledge of science in the form of generalized ideas or major concepts that can be reduced to a large number of information items, and (b) manner of building up students’ knowledge into meaningful units as matrices of interrelated concepts. Attention is directed to difficulties emerging in developing cognitive structures related to complex contents of science and methods of concept learning in the teaching process. The results of investigations show that students’ mastery of concepts is poor, and the reasons are to be found in the abstract character of contents themselves, lack of ability to interrelate contents within one discipline and between cognate ones, and the absence of establishing relationships between scientific concepts in cognitive structure. An efficient method of presenting scientific concepts was given and explained at three levels, such as macro, micro and symbolic. A model was suggested as a possible method for netting concepts in chemistry at primary school level. Practical recommendations were given to teachers how to assess students’ cognitive structure and how to apply appropriate methods.

Keywords

• concepts
• science
• fundamental ideas
• conceptual levels
• planning of teaching