elements of concept attainment model

1. Concept Attainment Model

2. Concept Attainment Model
• Designed to help students learn concepts for
organising information and to help students
become more effective at learning concepts.
• Based on the assertion that human beings have
the inherent capacity to discriminate and
categorize things into group.

3. • Concept
– Concept is a mental representation or mental
picture of some objects or experience.
– Represents a category of objects which share
common properties.
– “A concept is simply a label of a set of things that
something in common.”
- Archer (1969)

4. • Elements of a concept
1. Name : it is the term or label given to a concept
2. Attributes : features or characteristics of objects
– Essential Attributes: common features of the
concepts
• Should be present in all the examples
• Removal of this will change the concept

5. • Non- essential attributes
– Attributes which are not essential for a concept
– Removal of this will not change the concept.
• Example
• Concept : Triangle
• Essential attribute
– Closed geometrical figures, three sides, three angles
• Non- essential attribute
– Length of the sides, measures of angles, colour

6. 3. Examples
– Positive examples
– Negative examples

7. Concept Attainment Model
• Name of the concept
• Definition of the concept
• Essential attributes
• Non-essential attributes
• Positive examples
• Negative examples

8. • Focus
– To help students learn concepts for organising
information and to help students become more
effective at learning concepts.

9. • Syntax
– Phase I: Presentation of Data and Identification of
concept
– Phase II: Testing Attainment of the concept
– Phase III: Analysis of Thinking strategies

10. Phase I:
Presentation of Data and Identification of concept
• Introduction
• Presentation of examples
– Teacher presents labelled examples
• Comparison of attributes
– Students compare attributes in positive and negative
examples

11. • Generating and testing hypothesis
– Students generate and test hypotheses
• Naming the concept
– Students state a definition according to the
essential attributes

12. Phase II:
Testing Attainment of the concept
• Teacher tests the concepts attained by the students
using the following techniques
– Students identify additional unlabelled examples as
‘yes’ or ‘no’
– Teacher restate definitions according to the essential
attributes
– Students generate own examples

13. Phase III:
Analysis of Thinking strategies
• Students describe thoughts.
• Students discuss role of hypotheses and
attributes.
• Students discuss type and number of
hypotheses.
• Evaluating the strategies.

14. • Social System
– Moderate structure
– Students interaction is encouraged
– Freedom to students for generating hypothesis
• Principle of Reaction
– Teacher act as a supporter and motivate students in
designing the hypothesis formulation.
– Students discuss and evaluate their thinking strategies
with proper assistance of the teacher

15. • Support System
– Creative learning environment for attaining
concepts and active participation.
– Appropriate examples , non examples and
organised materials

16. • Instructional Effect
– Students learn clear idea about the concept
– They get practice in inductive reasoning
– Get opportunities to improve concept building
strategies

17. • Nurturant Effect
– Sensitivity to logical reasoning in communication
– Tolerance
– Awareness of alternative perspectives

18. Advantages
• It develops the reasoning power of the students.
• It helps in developing the power of imagination
• Helps in analyzing things systematically
• Helps students to examine a concept from a
number of perspectives.
• Helps to learn how to sort out relevant
information.