what is a concept?, Types of concepts, Experiences and its role in learning.

1. Concepts and Experiences
Dr. Jagannath K. Dange
Associate Professor
Department of Education
Kuvempu University
Shankaraghatta
Dist: Shimoga,Karnataka
drjkdange@gmail.com
http://jkdange.blogspot.com

2. Answer some questions…..
• What is a concept?
• Concept of mango.
• Concept of school.
• Concept of Beauty.
• Concept of wealth.

3. Concepts
• The basic intension of education is making pupils
to learn and the process of learning includes
development of concepts.
• The concept is a general notion, conception or an
idea of something formed by mentally combining
all its characteristics of particulars; a construct
directly conceived or intuited(sensed) object of
thought.
• A concept is a common feature or characteristic.
• A concept is a term used to describe the
experience.

4. • A concept can be an expression used to
demonstrate the experience or a concept can be
a thing or sign used to demonstrate the
experience.
• In order to make our mental images into
concepts, individual must be able to compare,
reflect, and abstract, for these three logical
operations of the understanding are essential and
general conditions of generating any concept
whatever.

5. Abstract and Concrete concepts:
• Abstract concepts refer to ideas or concepts and
they have no physical referents. The abstract
terms include democracy, good, love, hell,
success, freedom, moral, heaven and any -isms
(secularism, Communism, feminism, racism,
sexism). These terms are fairly common and
familiar, and because we recognize them, we may
imagine that we understand them—but we really
can't, because the meanings won't stay
still(same in all contexts).

6. • Consider the word freedom the word is familiar
enough, but when we say, "I want freedom," what
am I talking about?
• Is it self-employment?
• vacation?
• Sharing?
• Selection?
• Paid-off debts?
• My own car?
The meaning of freedom won't stay still.
“Abstract terms are useful and necessary when we
want to name ideas, but they're not likely to make
points clear by themselves”

7. • Concrete concepts refer to objects or events that
are available to the senses (This is directly
opposite to abstract terms, which name things
that are not available to the senses).
• The concrete terms include spoon, table, green,
hot, walk.
• Because these terms refer to objects or events
we can see or hear or feel or taste or smell.
“While abstract terms like freedom change
meaning with time and circumstances, concrete
terms like spoon stay very much the same”

8. • The nature of language and science is abstract.
They use symbols—words —to represent reality.
• It is important to remember that those words are
not reality itself.
• Abstract words, such as indecision and
difference, are abundant in daily conversation.
They refer to diverse concepts such as
personality traits, emotions, cognitive
processes, and events.

9. • Katja W and Xu (2005) say that abstract
concepts (e.g., difference) are easily
distinguished from concrete concepts (e.g.,
bucket).
• Only concrete concepts represent physical
entities, defined by spatial boundaries and
perceivable attributes.

10. • Concepts are part of life, if no development of concepts
probably no life and development of concepts happens only
through learning.
• Every individual will have the concept of same object or
incident in different way.
• It is the sense organs who help us in having the perceptions
of concepts.
• Sometimes once, developed concepts can be changed
suddenly and some may take longer duration to change.
• The experience plays an important role in the development
of concept.
• Concepts can be learnt through variety of experiences.
The concept of Rose can be developed by showing rose picture
with explanation, or only by explanation, through video, or a
real rose can be brought into the classroom and pupils can see,
touch and smell it lively and a real experience can be given,
which always helps in concretizing the concept.

12. • Teachers teach the curriculum by dividing it to many
concepts, for teaching any concept they have to select a
well suited experiences in relation to the content(Concept),
students background, environment and so on, because
through experiences only individuals can have the clear
understanding of the concept, if concepts are experienced
it normally results to learning.
• Concepts, experiences and learning are three important
non separable elements of education process.
• The process of Education is solely dependent on these
three elements.
• If teachers want to make their students to learn, think of
the clear concept and plan for a feasible and suitable
experience to present the concept, so that the learning can
take place easily and effectively.

13. EXPERIENCE…….
What is it?
How it be?
How it can be assessed?

14. Experiences
John Dewey says that, the nature of experience can be
understood only by noting that it includes an active and a
passive element peculiarly combined.
On the active hand, experience is trying -- a meaning which
is made explicit in the connected term experiment.
On the passive, it is undergoing.
The connection of these two phases of experience
measures the fruitfulness or value of the experience.
Mere activity does not constitute experience; it is
dispersive(scatter), and centrifugal(separate).
Experience as trying involves change, but change is
meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected
with the return wave of consequences which flow from it.

15. • It is not experience when a child merely sticks his
finger into a flame; it is experience when the
movement is connected with the pain which s/he
undergoes in consequence.
• Henceforth the sticking of the finger into flame
means a burn.
• Being burned is a mere physical change, like the
burning of a stick of wood, if it is not perceived as
a consequence of some other action.

16. • To 'learn from experience" is to make a backward and
forward connection between what we do to things and
what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence.
• Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an
experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the
undergoing becomes instruction--discovery of the
connection of things.
• Two conclusions are important for education to follow.
1. Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not
primarily cognitive, but the measure of the value of an
experience lies in the perception of relationships or
continuities to which it leads up.
2. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative
or amounts to something, or has a meaning.

17. • “An ounce of experience is better than a ton of
theory”
• Simply because it is only in experience that any
theory has vital and verifiable significance.
• An experience, that too a very humble
experience, is capable of generating and carrying
any amount of theory or intellectual content, but
a theory apart from an experience cannot be
definitely grasped even as theory.
• It tends to become a mere verbal formula, or a
set of catchwords used to render thinking, or
genuine theorizing, unnecessary and impossible.

18. Reflection in Experience:
• According to John Dewey No experience having a
meaning is possible without some element of
thought.
• But we may contrast two types of experience
according to the proportion of reflection found in
them.
• All our experiences have a phase of "cut and try"
in them -- what psychologists call the method of
trial and error.

19. “Thinking is the method of an educative
experience”
• Experience, in short, is not a combination
of mind and world, subject and object,
method and subject matter, but is a
single continuous interaction of a great
diversity (literally countless in number) of
energies.

20. • Experience has shown that when children
have a chance at physical activities which
bring their natural impulses into play, going to
school is a joy, management is less of a
burden, and learning is easier.

21. • Much of our experience is indirect; it is
dependent upon signs which intervene between
the things and us, signs which stand for or
represent the former.
• All language, all symbols, are implements of an
indirect experience; in technical language the
experience which is procured by their means is
"mediated."

22. • Experience may be acquired in two ways; either,
first by noticing facts without any attempt to
influence the frequency of their occurrence or to
vary the circumstances under which they occur;
this is observation;
• or, secondly,
• by putting in action causes or agents over which
we have control, and purposely varying their
combinations, and noticing what effects take
place; this is experiment ( Herschel. J).

23. • Sometimes Experiences can be sensed, and
perceived but can not be demonstrated.
• Experiences can not equate explanation or
demonstration but still be presented as nearly
as possible, and may be a part of it can be
described and explained but not the whole and
exact experience.
• Experiences may be direct or indirect and of
concrete and abstract can be summarized in
pictorial device (P- 37.Dale 1949).

24. “Experiences are the means of acquiring concepts”
Jagannath K. Dange
• “Experiences are meant to experience not to
evaluate or compare among them. Experiences
are purely individualised, with the same kind of
experience one’s perception may be different
from others.”
Jagannath K. Dange