Concept Attainment Model

Brief overview:

The Concept Attainment Model is a way of teaching that helps students form their own understanding of a concept through "experience".

The basic idea of the model is to present students with examples and non-examples of a concept. At first as you present examples and non-examples you ask questions and help the students form hypothesis in a divergent way; any answer is okay and all thoughts are accepted. At the end, as students' thoughts and ideas are starting to converge the teacher can ask more directed questions that help the students come to the right conclusions.

Important to this method is carefully choosing examples and non-examples that will help students form a solid concept. Non-examples of things that are similar to the concept and that are easy misunderstandings are especially helpful.

In the classroom:

Two elementary teachers presented this model recently in my Instructional Design class. Under the pretense that we were 1st graders the teachers began by giving us an example and a non-example.

                            
From this we were asked to come up with a hypothesis. I didn't record the hypothesis so I don't remember many, but I'll give examples of what they might have been here.

Hypothesis:

Short animals
Animals with no horns

Animals without hair 

Animals that say "oink"  

Now the teachers gave us a few more examples and non-examples and had us add to or throw out our prior hypothesis based on our new knowledge.

                             

Hypothesis:

Words that have o in them

Words that have g in them
Short animals
Animals with no horns

Animals that eat all kinds of stuff

Animals without hair 

Animals that say "oink"  

After lots of brainstorming, coming up with new hypothesis and discarding some old ones, the teachers gave us a few more examples.

                            

Hypothesis:
Words that sound the same

Words that have o in them

Words that have g in them

Short animals
Animals with no horns

Animals that eat all kinds of stuff

Animals without hair 

Animals that say "oink" 

At this point we are getting the idea and the teachers began asking questions to direct our line of thinking. They asked us what we noticed about all the words that were examples. Of course the response was that they all ended with an O and a G. "You're right, all of these words end in the same way. What do you think we're teaching you about?" Our response was, "Words that sound the same." They again confirmed our thoughts and explained that we call it "rhyming" when the end of the words sound the same.

This classroom example was great. I think it could have been enhanced if the teachers had used some words that began with the same letters as non-examples and words that rhymed but ended with different letters to help students further conceptualize what rhyming is.

Possible Variations:

• This could be used with math equations or processes to help students observe rules
• Could work well when introducing a new concept that might be foreign to students. For example, you could introduce quadratics by showing pictures of parabolas in the world around us.
• I could use note-cards to present the examples and non-examples and have students write their theories on the board. 
•  Using a projector to present the list of examples and non-examples, as well as record and cross-out student theories, would be a great way to integrate technology. 

Perks:

• Learning about a concept through the experiences we have is the way the human brain naturally learns. Using the concept development method works along with children's natural learning process.
• This method is great for helping students to be more observant, develop conclusions, and verbalize what they notice.
• Because students are really heading the discovery process they are much more engaged.