1. A primer for conceptual structures
Nagarjuna G.
Meena Kharatmal
{nagarjuna,meena}@hbcse.tifr.res.in
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
(TIFR), Mumbai, India
CS-LTA @ ICCS 2011
July 25, 2011, Derby, UK

2. Lets us
● Start at the very beginning
● A B C .. literacy
● 1 2 3 .. numeracy
● Subject predicate object ..
● graphicacy
– Cartesian graphs
– Conceptual graphs

3. Why learn conceptual graphs
It helps us
● Move from implicit knowledge to explicit knowledge
● Move from less formal to more formal
● Establish the bridge between less formal and more
formal
● To develop rigor: clarity of expression
● To develop critical reasoning: clarity of thought
● And last but not the least
● To find a job for all of us :-)

4. The skills for CS
● Are generic skills required for all areas of
expertize
● Not only useful for computer science or
philosophy but for everyone

5. School Education misses
● Logic (almost all over the world)
● We don't do this explicitly (except in philosophy,
computer science which comes too late)
● Even in computer science we do it quickly, assuming
that these are too preliminary
● We jump into formalism, without catching the
opportunity to capture the reasoning that happens
when we settle on the structure of a proposition or a
set of propositions.
● The means of disambiguation (which leads into
clarity of expression and thought or simply rigor)

6. Spectrum
from implicit to explicit

7. The case
● Just as we teach
● Grammer
● Arithmetic
● Algebra
● Geometry
● Statistics
● And graphs
● We should teach conceptual structures and
logic by integrating with the above

8. Use CS as a context
● Because the reasoning involved in making CS
is good for linguistics, philosophy, computer
science and logic
● Thus it may help bridge the gap between the
less formal and more formal fields

9. Network with other groups
● Who think that philosophy and logic to be
included in schools (philosophy for children
project)
● IHPST group (runs the journal Science and
Education)

10. To begin with we need a primer
● That captures some of the missing elements
● and establishes links with the rest of the
training

11. The primer should address
● Reasons to learn conceptual structures
● Skills and background knowledge for
representing and analyzing CS
● Plenty of graded activities, problems
● A glimpse of applications of CS
● Build a teaching-learning sequence (a
dependency map)

12. Outline of the primer

13. Special Interest Group
● So we need an SIG under the CS-LTA
● To do field studies
● To write the worksheets
● To create a curriculum
● To network with other groups
● To conduct workshops
● and to champion the cause

14. Thank you!
Nagarjuna G
nagarjun@gnowledge.org
Meena Kharatmal
meena@hbcse.tifr.res.in