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Considering Cognitive Development and Conceptual Learning
The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1934/1986) drew the distinction between
two types of concepts—those that an individual develops spontaneously without
formal instruction, and those that are acquired only through formal teaching of
some kind. Whilst something of a simplification, this proves to be a useful dis-
tinction when thinking about student learning. Vygotsky's class of taught concepts
may be labelled as “academic”, although interestingly the common translation is
“scientific”.
Whereas “spontaneous” concepts are considered to derive from the individual's
inherent “sense-making” of the environment, Vygotsky's “scientific” or “academic”
concepts are considered to be part of the cultural capital of the society in which an
individual is raised, and to be culturally “transmitted”—often intergenerationally.
This may of course be seen as one function of formal educational institutions
(schools, colleges, universities): that is to impart that knowledge valued by a society
and considered suitable and appropriate to pass on to the young.
Spontaneous Learning
Before considering some issues surrounding the learning of academic or scien-
tific concepts, it is useful to consider how concepts may be learnt spontaneously.
This discussion will be largely framed in terms of the learning of individuals, an
important point to which I will return.
The learning of “spontaneous” concepts can be understood in terms of the prin-
ciples discussed by such thinkers as Piaget and Dewey. John Dewey had a notion
of people as learning through experience in terms of how their expectations were or
were not met in particular interactions with the world (Biesta & Burbules, 2003).
In effect, people are naive scientists who form models of the world that allow them
to act intelligently by predicting the effect of various behaviours. When expecta-
tions are not met, that experience leads us to modify the models that we hold and
apply. That is, we act as scientists with an instrumentalist epistemology: our knowl-
edge of the world is tentative, acts as the best currently available basis for action,
and (in principle at least) is always open to revision when new evidence suggests
this is indicated (Glasersfeld, 1988). In practice, of course, people are well known
to often fail to shift their thinking even when acknowledging the lack of match
between predictions based upon their existing models of the world and new experi-
ences. Indeed this issue is at the basis of personal construct theory, an approach to
therapy developed by George Kelly (1963) to help clients “shift” ways of constru-
ing the world that were considered to be counterproductive and acting as barriers to
personal happiness and growth.
A clear problem for Dewey's approach (which was primarily philosophical) is
the issue of a starting point: how do we get to the point where we make sense of
the world enough to form those initial models that can guide our actions? To borrow
William James's phrase—how do we get past the point where our perception of the
world is just a “blooming, buzzing confusion”?
