How is a concept different from the information you might put into a knowledge organiser?

This is the third and final extract from the second conversation between Grace Jackson, Angela Oakley and Henry Welwyn.

The previous extract can be found here.

You can find the complete conversation here.

Grace Jackson: You’re always using the word ‘concept’, Henry. How is a concept different from the information you might put into a knowledge organiser?

Henry Welwyn: This brings us back to what we were talking about earlier: rules. I would say a concept functions like a rule. It gives you guidance as to how you should make sense of whatever it is you’re thinking about.

GJ: Give us an example.

HW: Well, in history, I just talked about militarism. Understanding the concept of militarism means making correct judgments about whether or not a person can be described as ‘militarist’. A student might read about any historical figure who declared war and think, they declared war, therefore they must be militarist. That would be a failure to understand the concept. In other words, they have not followed the disciplinary rules around how we should understand that historical figure.

GJ: I’m not sure I get what you mean.

HW: Another example might be the word ‘fascist’. George Orwell wrote that wonderful essay about how, in the 1930s, the use of language had degenerated to the point where people called anyone they didn’t like a ‘fascist’, regardless of their political standpoint.

GJ: That sounds like Angela.

Angela Oakley: I’m sorry, Grace. I was a bit steamed up earlier, as you know.

HW: Your cognition was running hot! And that’s the point: calling someone a fascist when you’re a bit angry is a classic example of System 1 thinking. It’s completely undisciplined. Any historian – a person who has gone through the long and arduous process of training themselves to obey the rules of the discipline – would be a lot more judicious about how they used that word. This is the point of education: it’s about disciplining ourselves so that we can resist these sorts of temptations.

GJ: Maybe in history, but I’m not sure I’d use those terms in science. Is a student ‘tempted’ to think the Sun goes around the Earth before we tell them that’s not what happens? Are they ‘tempted’ to go back to the earlier worldview? I’m not sure they are.

HW: You’re right, perhaps ‘temptation’ is the wrong word to use in science. But you know what I mean, don’t you? Even if you’re not making any sort of value judgments, you’re having to let go of your intuitions and adopt a whole new way of thinking about the world. You’re still having to overcome the self, to override your System 1 thinking with the hard effort of System 2 thinking. You must be able to think of loads of examples where that’s the case.

GJ: Of course. The Earth going around the Sun is an obvious one, although we tell children that so early that they just seem to accept it without thinking how crazy it is.

HW: Matter being made up of atoms that are mostly empty space: that’s pretty mind blowing.

GJ: To be honest, I’d say most students haven’t really grasped how mind blowing that is. They don’t see a direct connection between the atoms they learn about in class and the matter that exists all around them. I suppose that’s something we should think about.

HW: That’s a great example of how hard it is to let go of our intuitions. I’m not sure your System 1 thinking could function if it entirely abandoned the idea that matter was solid and robust.

GJ: I guess you’d be pretty wary of walking over a bridge or travelling in an aeroplane.

AO: What other ideas in science do students find difficult to grasp? I remember finding most of it difficult!

GJ: Well, there’s the one we talked about last time, about the idea of coldness. Students intuitively think coldness is a thing that moves, whereas the correct way to think about it is in terms of energy being transferred from hot to cold.

HW: Yes, I remember seeing you teach that lesson. So the concept is what – energy always being transferred from hot to cold?

GJ: Exactly. That’s the first law of thermodynamics, in simple terms.

HW: The fact that it’s called a law tells you how that concept functions as a rule. That concept is not just an item of information to be added to a knowledge organiser so students can recite it word for word. It’s a rule they must use when making sense of concrete contexts.

GJ: Yes, like opening the fridge door, or if there’s a draught coming through the window on a cold day, or if you take a can of coke out of the fridge and it warms up. I think I’m starting to see what you’re arguing for. I actually observed someone else teaching that lesson to Year 7 recently. They went through the definition – energy always being transferred from the hotter object to the cooler one – then asked a check for understanding question which was along the lines of ‘Energy is always transferred from something to something: what are the missing words?’ Pretty much all the students could answer ‘hot to cold’ on their mini-whiteboards, but I remember wondering at the time whether they really got it.

HW: That’s it! A student could have the definition of that law stored word for word in their long term memory, but if they’ve never been asked to use it, in relation to a concrete example, then it’s going to be pretty much meaningless. If it doesn’t mean anything to them and they can’t use it to make sense of the world, then what have they actually learned? Can they be said to know the first law of thermodynamics just because they can repeat back those words? I don’t think they can.

GJ: A better question would have been ‘Why does a can of coke warm up when you take it out of the fridge?’ And if you were doing it as a multiple choice question, your options would include at least one that is based on the assumption that the can of coke is radiating coldness outwards, rather than thermal energy being transferred in.

HW: This is exactly what I mean: I think it illustrates something we talked about last time, which is the difference between a novice and an expert. The working memory – long-term memory model suggests that the main difference between a novice and an expert is the volume of domain-specific information each of them has stored in their long-term memory. But that would not explain how a student could ever apply a concept like the one we’ve been talking about to a new example. If that model was correct, then a student would have to have been shown every possible example in the universe in which the first law of thermodynamics could be applied, which is obviously impossible.

AO: It also begs the question how anyone could come up with any new ideas in the first place.

GJ: I take your point. Obviously, we can’t show students every single possible example ever. But surely you’d agree that showing students as many concrete examples as possible is a good thing?

HW: Definitely, but why is it a good thing? What a lot of our teachers currently say – especially those in SLT – is that by seeing lots of concrete examples you store up lots of information in your long term memory. What I’m arguing is that every time you see a new concrete example, your System 2 thinking has to force itself to follow a disciplinary rule, whether it’s the meaning of the word ‘militarism’ or the first law of thermodynamics.

The first time you have to follow that rule – let’s say you’re looking at the can of coke example in science – it’s super difficult. Your System 2 has to do an awful lot of work to override the System 1 intuition that coldness is radiating outwards. The next time you do it – let’s say you’re now thinking about opening the fridge door – it’s marginally easier. If you keep doing it over a long period of time, then, after many days, weeks, months and years, following that rule will become easier and easier. Eventually, you’ll have internalised that rule to the point at which it’s part of your System 1 thinking. Your intuitions will have been reshaped; you won’t remember how you could possibly think about it otherwise. At that point, when you see a new example – an unfamiliar, concrete context – you’ll be able to apply the concept to it almost effortlessly. That’s when you can be said to have acquired knowledge.

If you’d like to read on, the complete book is available here.