Inductive Reasoning Model
Basic overview:
The inductive reasoning model allows students to explore a new concept and form general rules/ideas about it based on their experiences with specific examples. This is a more broad version of concept development.
Teachers begin by introducing the activity. The first phase is the divergent phase, where teachers ask questions and guide the students, but in all questions are open-ended. Students are allowed to explore and pretty much any answer goes. The second phase is the convergent phase. The teacher asks questions that guide students to a a more specific understanding of the concept. More specific questions can be asked in this phase. The last two phases are closure and application. During the closure phase the teacher gives the students the opportunity to fully conceptualize what they have done through writing about it, drawing a picture or diagram, etc. The application phase is the assessment phase where students demonstrate the understand the concept and are encouraged to apply what they have learned to novel situations.
In the classroom:
Recently in my Instructional Design class two students presented the concept development model as if we were 2nd grade students. We were given a stack of pictures and asked to sort them into two different categories. We looked our pictures and the first thing we noticed were that there were lots of people. We sorted the pictures into the categories "people" and "things".
This classroom example was great. I think it could have been enhanced if the things we had to sort weren't so blatantly different. Perhaps if we had been given pictures of people and had to sort them into their different career types it would have helped us to better conceptualize what a service career is. Something to think about here would be if this would have been age-appropriate, but I think with a few more guiding questions that even students in the earlier grades could have sorted pictures of people in different careers.
Possible variations:
Perks:
A great resource for the Inductive method is https://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=53403
The inductive reasoning model allows students to explore a new concept and form general rules/ideas about it based on their experiences with specific examples. This is a more broad version of concept development.
Teachers begin by introducing the activity. The first phase is the divergent phase, where teachers ask questions and guide the students, but in all questions are open-ended. Students are allowed to explore and pretty much any answer goes. The second phase is the convergent phase. The teacher asks questions that guide students to a a more specific understanding of the concept. More specific questions can be asked in this phase. The last two phases are closure and application. During the closure phase the teacher gives the students the opportunity to fully conceptualize what they have done through writing about it, drawing a picture or diagram, etc. The application phase is the assessment phase where students demonstrate the understand the concept and are encouraged to apply what they have learned to novel situations.
Recently in my Instructional Design class two students presented the concept development model as if we were 2nd grade students. We were given a stack of pictures and asked to sort them into two different categories. We looked our pictures and the first thing we noticed were that there were lots of people. We sorted the pictures into the categories "people" and "things".
This classroom example was great. I think it could have been enhanced if the things we had to sort weren't so blatantly different. Perhaps if we had been given pictures of people and had to sort them into their different career types it would have helped us to better conceptualize what a service career is. Something to think about here would be if this would have been age-appropriate, but I think with a few more guiding questions that even students in the earlier grades could have sorted pictures of people in different careers.
Possible variations:
- Inquiry, discovery, problem based, and project-based learning are all variations of the inductive model of learning.
- Have students study several specific situations (in science, math, history, etc), write down preconceptions about a topic, and correct the preconceptions.
- Open-ended questions on the topic can be asked by the teacher and answered by the students online prior to class to get the students curious and thinking in the right direction.
Perks:
- Students discover by ourselves through specific instances, a way that our minds naturally learn.
- The point of this is discovery. If they don't get it, you have to ask questions to get that inquiry to happen.
- A very general model and you can use many sub-models within it.
A great resource for the Inductive method is https://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=53403
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