Tool 1: Concepts
In thinking about the learner’s existing knowledge in terms of concepts9 we are putting forward an idea of mental structures in someone’s head10.The aim of teaching and learning is to change these mental structures, hence the term ‘conceptual change’.
One thing that has been demonstrated repeatedly in research studies is that students’ prior conceptions are surprisingly resistant to instruction. Even after scoring high marks in formal assessment, when faced with conceptual type questions successful students, even at the tertiary level, can display concepts that are not in agreement with science11.
An important idea which has recently emerged in higher education research is that of a ‘threshold concept’: those key ideas in a discipline which need to be mastered in order to see the world in a different way12.
What does this mean for engineering education?
Most of the research on concepts and conceptual change has been in the natural science disciplines of physics and chemistry, some of this work with university students. Given that these are the disciplines which form part of the foundation for engineering studies, there is much here that can be applied directly to engineering education. For example, the Force Concept Inventory (FCI)13 is a test which can be administered to students both before and after instruction to determine to what extent conceptual change has taken place.
There is considerable scope to extend this work into the foundational concepts in the engineering sciences. For example, a concept inventory has now been established in the area of fluid dynamics14.
In what ways might this be a useful thinking tool?
The focus on students’ concepts both before and after instruction was a major step forward in education theory – rather than simply stating that a student ‘got it wrong’, one started to take an active interest in the wrong answers.This has proved to be a very productive angle both for research and also for teaching. Teaching which elicits students’ prior conceptions means that instruction can be focused directly on what students are struggling with.
More recently, teachers are using the idea of ‘threshold concepts’ to unpack overloaded curricula and decide what are the really key ideas that students need to focus on.
Show me an example
Carew, A. L., and Mitchell, C. A. (2002). Characterising Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Understanding of Sustainability. European Journal of Engineering Education, 27 (4), 349-361
In the context of new requirements for engineers to ‘understand’ sustainability15, Anna Carew and Cynthia Mitchell set out to investigate the understanding of a group of third year engineering students who had just completed a module on sustainable development. To do this they chose to use the SOLO Taxonomy: a scheme for characterising students’ conceptual development16. This scheme proposes that conceptual development can be analysed according to five stages of increasing conceptual sophistication. At the bottom of the scheme is the ‘prestructural’ stage which essentially involves no real understanding. This is followed by ‘unistructural’ and ‘multistructural’ stages in which the student displays knowledge of one or more items of content knowledge, but with no interrelations. In the ‘relational’ phase the student interrelates different items and in ‘extended abstract’ the student is able to use critical reflection to generate new ideas.
Carew and Mitchell asked students to provide written responses to the question ‘in your own words, what is sustainability?’ They then classified these responses into the five different SOLO levels.What was notable was that 65% of these students displayed responses at the pre- or unistructural stages, despite having just completed a module on this very topic!
Based on these findings, Carew and Mitchell suggest that we need to move beyond general statements advocating students’ understanding in this area and we need to give more detailed guidance on what levels of understanding we should be expecting from our undergraduates.We may also need to rethink our teaching methods if we wish to develop conceptual understanding in our classes.
- This perspective comes from cognitive science. Much science education research in this area builds on the studies of Piaget, and this is sometimes referred to as a ‘constructivist’ theory of learning (cf. Matthews, 1998).
- Other terms which have been used instead of ‘concept’ include conceptual structures, phenomenological primitives, conceptual ecology and mental models (Leach and Scott, 2003).
- An extensive bibliography by Pfundt and Duit (1994) details the literally thousands of science education studies which describe‘alternative conceptions’ across a wide range of topics. A popular demonstration of this idea can be seen in the film ‘A Private Universe’ in which Harvard University graduates gave their answers to two simple questions about the causes of the seasons and the phases of the moon (Scheps and Sadler, 1988).
- A very helpful overview by Glynis Cousin on threshold concepts can be found at http://www.gees.ac.uk/planet/p17/gc.pdf published by the Geographical, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy.
- See Saivinainen and Scott (2002) for a useful overview of the FCI.
- (Martin, Mitchell, and Newell, 2003).
- This was based on the latest accreditation requirements from the Institution of Engineers in Australia, in particular a requirement similar to statement E-3 in UK-SPEC.
- (Biggs and Collis, 1982).
