Ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching
Being Deliberate
About Concept Development
Effectively moving students from experience to understanding
By Joanne K. Olson
A
common mistake in
the science classroom
is to expect students to
develop understanding
from one activity or experience.
This is just as short-sighted as
expecting understanding to spring
from one teacher lecture. Ideally, students pass through several
phases of a learning cycle as they
develop understanding of a concept. Multiple exploration phases
are each followed by concept
development phases where teachers help students makes sense of
their explorations and develop
conceptual understanding of the
targeted science idea. These concept development phases are then
followed by further exploration
and concept development phases
that move students progressively
toward the desired big idea. The
key is to have these exploration
and concept development phases
follow one another in a way that
bolsters and extends students’
thinking. The application phase
that culminates the unit should
have students use the big idea in a
new and slightly different or more
challenging context.
In order to move students’
thinking from the exploration
experiences to concept understanding (and thus the ability to
then apply that understanding),
teachers must deliberately consider students’ misconceptions,
February 2009 51
Figure 1.
Logic flow chart showing the progression of understanding.
Key Point #1:
If we watch organism X for a long
time, then we notice that it behaves
in patterns.
Evidence:
Organism X prefers ______ light.
Organism X prefers ____
humidity.
Organism X moves toward
areas of the container that
are covered with ___.
Organism X prefers ____ food.
All the individuals of Organism
X we observe have the same
preferences.
Key Point #2:
If we watch Organism Y for a long
time, then we see that it behaves
in patterns also, but the patterns
may be different than Organism X.
Therefore, different organisms may
have different needs.
the intermediate steps to the
accurate conception, and how
to scaffold students’ understanding step-by-step to the desired
understanding. A particular
challenge is that students often
use the exploration experiences
to support their misconceptions.
This does not mean that experience is unimportant—but it does
mean that our role in the concept
development phase is crucial.
Consider the following ways that
the concept development phase
can be made ineffective:
52 Science and Children
Evidence:
Organism Y prefers ____ light.
Organism Y prefers ____
humidity, which is (the same/
different) than Organism X.
Key Point #3:
If we study the natural environments of
Organisms X and Y, then we notice that
they live in locations that possess the
things they need. Therefore, organisms
live in places that meet their needs.
Therefore, organisms do not live in
places that do not meet their needs.
Evidence:
Environment B is (drier/
wetter/more rocky) than
Environment A.
Organisms A and B are found
in Environment A but not in
Environment B.
Key Point #4:
If we study other natural environments,
then we see different organisms, and
we do not see Organisms X and Y.
Key Point #5:
If we observe an organism in its natural environment, then we see that it
interacts with other organisms. Sometimes it eats other organisms, or is
eaten by other organisms. Sometimes
organisms appear to be helpful to
one another. Some organisms survive
in an environment with predators by
having a large number of individuals.
Therefore, an organism is also affected by the other organisms in the
environment.
•Having a class discussion and
expecting students to get the
concept on their own;
•Telling students what they should
have found in their investigation;
•Introducing new information
without making a connection
to the experience;
•Providing new information to
students but not ensuring students are making sense of the
new ideas; and
•Introducing vocabulary before students understand the
concepts.
This list highlights the challenges
that exist in the concept development phase. Students will likely
not develop accurate concepts on
their own from the exploration.
The teacher is needed to carefully
scaffold students’ thinking from
their current ideas to the new concepts. This means that we must
deliberately plan for the concept
development phase, as it is the
crucial point in the lesson where
students’ misconceptions are challenged and they try to make sense
of new information.
Evidence:
Organism X lives in ____, where
the (humidity/temperature/
light) is the same as what it
preferred when we watched it
in our classroom.
Evidence:
Organism X seems to eat _____.
Organism Y eats Organism Z.
Organism Y and Z live in the
same area.
There are many more
individuals of Organism Z
than Organism Y.
Organism X and Y live in the
same place, but do not seem
to hurt each other.
The Big Idea So Far: Organisms
behave in patterns, which may
be similar to or different from the
patterns of other organisms. How
the organism behaves depends
on its environment, which includes
physical characteristics such as light,
temperature, humidity, and the type
of surface the organism lives on. It
also includes access to food, and the
numbers and kinds of other organisms living in that environment.
Unit Logic Flow
So, how can we “deliberately plan”
concept development? Let’s examine an example from a fourth-grade
classroom studying life science.
Standard C for K–4 states: “An
organism’s patterns of behavior
are related to the nature of that
organism’s environment, including
the kinds and numbers of other
organisms present, the availability of food and resources, and the
physical characteristics of the environment. When the environment
changes, some plants and animals
survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations”
(NRC 1996, p. 129).
To teach this standard, I first
determine the components of this
standard that students must understand in order to grasp the big idea.
In this case, students need to see the
following:
(1) Organisms have patterns
of behavior and the behaviors are
related to the characteristics of
the environment. The characteristics of the environment include
physical characteristics (temperature, humidity, light, substrate,
etc.), other organisms present
(predators, competitors for food
or shelter, organisms helpful to its
survival, etc.), and availability of
food and resources;
and
(2) Changes can be made to
environments, and some of these
changes help the organism to survive, and some may be harmful,
causing it to die or have to move to
a new location that is better suited
to that organism’s needs.
At this point, I develop what I
call the “logic flow” for the unit,
a sequence of the key points and
transitions from experiences to
concepts that I need to focus on to
guide students toward the big idea.
Figure 1 is a sample of my “logic
flow” for this unit.
After creating the logic flow, I
compare my “big idea” with the
standard to see what I may be
missing and to ensure that the logic
flow is coherent and moves from
more simple ideas toward more
complex ideas. My next step is to
build the logic flow for the second
part of the standard that relates to
changes in the environment. Due
to space limitations, only the first
part of the standard is addressed in
this article.
Looking at the “logic flow” from
the standard, I can expect students
to make observations similar to
the statements in the “evidence”
sections, such as the light preferences of a particular organism. I
can expect this because students
can directly observe this pattern of
behavior. I cannot expect that they
will, without help, make the logical
statements expressed in my “If,
then…” sentences or in my “Therefore…” sentences (see Figure 1).
Some students may be able to make
these logical “leaps,” but many science ideas are generalizations that,
while supported by the data, are
not at all intuitive for students. We
need to remember that data does
not tell us what to think. We have
to interpret the data, and students
may interpret their data in multiple
ways that may not be consistent
with the accurate science idea.
Once I am satisfied with my logic
flow, I begin planning the unit in
more detail by making decisions
about activities and strategies.
Exploring, Then Concept
Development
In this unit, we will have several
iterations of “exploration, concept development, exploration,
concept development, etc.” before we reach the final application
phase. (This is why we frequently
call this model the learning cycle!)
February 2009 53
Selecting the activity for each
exploration requires that I find
organisms that meet the criteria
established in my “logic flow” and
that are safe and relatively easy to
use in the classroom. I selected
pill bugs and earthworms, as they
are very docile animals that show
strong preferences to changes
in light, soil type, temperature,
humidity, etc. My first challenge
is to help students see patterns in
pill bugs’ behavior and to move
them toward the idea that this organism has particular behavioral
patterns—every individual of this
species appears to prefer the same
kind of things.
The first exploration phase
will involve students observing
pill bugs in a classroom habitat.
This will be followed by a guiding question, “If we want to build
the ideal pill bug habitat, what
will it need?” As a whole class,
we will list aspects of a habitat
that they think are important—
light, food, water, soil, etc. I will
then pose questions, “How much
light do they need?” “What kind of
food?” “What kind of soil?” “How
might we test these ideas?” Students
develop tests and get the teacher’s
approval for safety reasons. Test
results are put on chart paper and
hung in the classroom. This is the
end of the first exploration phase
and the beginning of the first concept development phase. My role
here is crucial, and I plan in advance
the questions I will use to move
students toward my “logic flow”
that I need them to grasp. Here are
the questions I develop prior to
instruction:
54 Science and Children
• “Let’s look at our results. What
test should we look at first?”
• “What do you notice about the
(temperature/humidity/soil/
light) pill bugs prefer?”
• “How does that compare to the
results from other groups?”
• “But each group was using a
different pill bug. Why do you
think your groups had such
similar results?” (accept all
ideas here—we’ll come back
to this!)
• “Now let’s look at a different
test. What do you notice about
the (temperature/humidity/
soil/light) pill bugs prefer?”
• “ H o w d o e s t h a t c o m p a r e
t o t h e re su l t s f rom ot h e r
groups?” If results are different, “Why do you think we
had different results for this
test?”
• “How did your group test (soil,
light, humidity)?” “How does
that compare to the procedure
your group used?” If time permits, groups could retest using
the same procedure. If not, ask,
“How do you think our results
would compare if we all used
the same procedure?” Repeat
the above questions for different tests.
• “Let’s summarize what we have
so far. I’m going to put the
beginning of a sentence on the
board, and you write what you
think is a good ending to this
sentence that summarizes what
we’ve learned so far.”
Sentence starter: “Pill bugs need
certain things to survive. Pill
bugs need ________.”
More Exploring, More
Concept Development
My next move is to return to a second exploration phase, this time
using earthworms. Students will
conduct a similar investigation
and concept development phase
as above, but additional items will
be added to the concept development phase. For example, after
examining the results and working through questions similar to
above, add:
• Sentence starter: “Earthworms
also need certain things to
s u r v i ve . E a r t h wo r m s n e e d
______.”
• “How are earthworms’ behavior
and environment similar to pill
bugs?”
• “How are earthworms’ behavior
and environment different than
pill bugs?”
• “Notice that they all need moisture, food, temperature, something to live on, but the amount
of moisture, type of food, etc.,
might be different. Try completing these sentences:
• “If we see a new pill bug, we know
what it will need, because it will
be like _________________.
• If we see a different animal, we
might not know what it needs because __________________.”
The purpose of these sentences
is to get students thinking about
generalities rather than the details
of the pill bug or the earthworm.
I’m building toward the idea that
organisms have behavioral patterns, and different organisms
may have the same needs or dif-
ferent needs than other organisms. If a student says, “If we see
a different organism, we might not
know what it needs because we
haven’t tested it yet,” I can use that
student’s idea to move toward the
concept. “What do we learn from
testing it?” “Why don’t we just assume it will be like the pill bug?”
“Why do you think it might be
different?” The key here is to use
students’ ideas in ways that move
their thinking toward the concept
that different organisms may have
different needs, and individuals
of the same organism will have the
same needs.
I continue this pattern of providing experiences and following
those experiences with concept
development activities such as
sma ll group and who le-c lass
discussion, analysis of charts,
using sentence starters, concept
mapping, journaling, etc., to
progressively build the logic of
the unit. I ensure that students
are grasping the intended logical
step before I move on to the next
exploration phase of the unit.
We spend much time putting key
ideas on a bulletin board as we
progress through the unit (either
in the form of sentence strips or
a concept map). This ongoing
progression helps students see
where we have been and connect
the current day’s sense-making
to prior ideas. At the end of the
unit, we work to summarize the
key ideas, and I actively monitor
the students to ensure they are
grasping the big idea rather than
getting caught up in details. In
this case, learning about pill bugs
is only an example of a larger
concept that applies equally to
humans and wolves as it does
to pill bugs and earthworms. I
have to move beyond the pill bug
details and to the larger connections between all organisms for
my students to grasp that level of
generality. Eventually, when students grasp the central concept of
the first part of the standard, we
will transition to an application
phase where they will apply their
understanding of that concept to
address what might occur when
the environment changes and an
organism’s needs are no longer
met. This aligns with the second
part of the standard, and while it
is an “application” of the first big
idea, it is also an “exploration”
of a new idea—thus this “learning cycle” continues to cycle
back to explorations and finally
culminates in an experience that
requires them to apply their understanding of the standard to a
meaningful task.
Final Thoughts
Concept development requires
not only a strong grasp of the
content and logical progression
of the unit but also very wellorchestrated teacher behaviors.
The teacher must be adept at
using open-ended questions
and extended wait time to gain a
strong sense of student thinking.
Student misconceptions are likely
to arise at unexpected moments,
and for this reason, no lesson
can ever be fully scripted. Teachers must effectively develop and
use questions during the act of
Connecting to the
Standards
This article relates to the following National Science Education
Standards (NRC 1996):
Teaching Standards
Standard B
• Teachers of science guide
and facilitate learning
Standard C
• Teachers of science engage
in ongoing assessment of
their teaching and of student learning.
National Research Council (NRC).
1996. National science education
standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
teaching that can respond to and
work with students’ erroneous
ideas. But working with a logical
progression of the unit helps the
teacher ensure that he or she has
a road map of where to go, so that
as students’ thinking roams the
landscape, we can more clearly
see where they are and where
they need to be at each step of
the way. n
Joanne K. Olson (jkolson@iastate.
edu) is an associate professor in
science education at Iowa State
University in Ames, Iowa.
Reference
National Research Council (NRC).
1996. National science education
standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
February 2009 55