Jonathan Troop / Concept Attainment LOG

Determining Meaning

The Concept Attainment model is the brainchild of Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline

Goodnow, and George Austin in their groundbreaking work “A Study of Thinking”. One

of the main ideas behind the concept attainment model is that categorizing the world

through several concepts makes it easier for the learner to make sense of the world and

simultaneously decreases the need for constant learning. Like in the KUD principle, the

previously learned concepts heuristically transfer to new and more complex concepts.

For this model, the teacher is often the center of the class, but progression is driven by

students. In order to reach a conclusion and define a concept, the teacher must guide

the students into making an associative list of ‘Examples,’ ‘Non-examples,’ and

‘Hypothesis.’ By clearly defining the parts of what the concept is and is not, the students

can then easily conceptualize the information.

Interpreting Meaning

The concept attainment model uses an inductive approach. This facilitates students to

move from observations to hypothesis to a general theory or concept. The students’

minds are highly active because the process is like a jig-saw puzzle or mystery novel;

small pieces of the picture are revealed one-by-one until the little bits of information add

up to the materialized concept. One of the model lessons in the chapter works toward

the goal of having students understand the expressive nature of metaphorical thinking.

The first example it gives is a flowery metaphor, and the students then hypothesize

what it is. The second example is another metaphor, albeit less poetic in nature, which
makes the students quickly realize that what is taking place is a comparison. Then the

first negative example is an analogy, which then makes the students realize the

difference between metaphors and analogies, then through teacher guidance, the class

makes a working definition of a metaphor. The key here is that the students already had

a background in comparisons. Without that previous knowledge, the concept of a

metaphor wouldn’t make sense. However, by hierarchically building concepts, the

students can then make connections and distinctions between two similar but different

things. For example, the concept of food can be subcategorized into food that grows

from plants, which can then be further categorized into fruits and vegetables, which can

then be sub-categorized even further as one delves into the underbelly of botany. The

concept attainment model allows students to utilize what they already know, and then

finely tune that knowledge into new categories and concepts.

Extending Meaning

As the world grows ever-more complex, as is the nature of discover makes it, learners

will have to be able to make sense of the world. If all learners know are a multitude of

seemingly unrelated facts, it will be easy to lose track of the bigger picture. However, by

using the concept attainment model, all of the information rattling around in the brain

can be efficiently organized into concepts, categories and generalizations. Concepts

help promote the KUD fundamentals because without previous knowledge, forming

concepts would be incredibly difficult, thus making it an essential part of the model.

What’s more is that for early learners, concepts can be very broad, which could help

level the playing field in schools by helping underprivileged learners a chance to

connect their experience with a broad concept. One important factor in expressing
intelligence is the ability to define and make sense of what you know. If one were to try

expressing their feelings, it would be difficult without the proper concepts of different

emotions. By teaching feelings in this manner, a teacher (or parent for that matter) could

first categorize into very broad categories like positive and negative emotions, then get

into the idea of anger, then the nuances of anger like frustration, impatience, etc. For

me, when I was in grade school, I always had an easy time making sense of the

information because my teachers helped me make conceptual models to help me digest

the information. While only a few teachers used this model, the idea of forming concepts

carried over to other classes for me and made it easy to see connections and link

seemingly-unrelated things together. Because of its particular effectiveness, I see this

model increasing in popularity and relevance because of two reasons; an ever complex

world and a need to make sense of it.