Abstract
Conceptual profiles are models of the heterogeneity of thought and language in the classroom, embedded into a theoretical structure that addresses school science social language learning from a sociocultural perspective. They are related to an understanding of concepts that denies its interpretation as entirely internal mental structures and conceives concepts as parts of natural languages or knowledge structures, entities or linguistic structures external to the mind that do not become entirely internalized. Conceptual thinking is conceived as an emergent process, always produced through interaction between individuals and external experiences. Since the theory takes as a basis Vygotsky’s general genetic law of cultural development, according to which individual thinking develops through the internalization of cultural tools available in social interactions, when we deny that there can be concept internalization, a potential contradiction appears, which is discussed and solved in this paper based on Vygotsky’s theory and on situated cognition. We also elaborate on the characteristics of conceptual profiles as models of the different ways of seeing and conceptualizing the world present in a given sociocultural circumstance, discuss the nature of learning according to the conceptual profile theory, and examine an example of such model, built to deal with the semantic dimension of teaching and learning about heat and temperature.
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Notes
- 1.
Mortimer and Scott (2003, p. 18) use the expression “scientific story” to designate the way the scientific perspective is narrated to the students in the social plane of the classroom, so as to make it accessible to them. They depart from Ogborn and colleagues’ (1996) claim that science teaching puts forth an approach to natural phenomena that is expressed in ideas and conventions characteristic of the language of school science, so as to compose a kind of script, which is similar to a story.
- 2.
It is now widely entertained by many philosophers that it is possible, and thus acceptable, that one can have propositional attitudes without having the relevant mental representations as mental particulars in one’s head (as commented by Margolis and Laurence 2008). Daniel Dennett (1978) provides an example when he argues that most people believe zebras do not wear overcoats in the wild – and a million other similar facts – although they have never stopped to consider such matters and, thus, cannot possess any mental representation of the belief inside their heads. According to the view advocated here, we can say that they are led to believe so because these ideas are not entertained by the language in which they have been brought up.
- 3.
It is consequential, thus, that we speak, in Vygotsky’s sociointeractionist view, about an internal plane of functioning, instead of internal mental models or schemes. We are dealing here not with mental structures to be read aloud but with dynamic processes that take place in between our brain and body and the social activities and contexts in which we are engaged.
- 4.
- 5.
In terms of the ontology of concepts, maybe the philosophical view that is more consistent with the account of concepts as social constructs developed here is that of concepts as Fregean senses, which is generally held by philosophers who are opposed to identifying concepts with mental representations and takes concepts to be abstract objects, as opposed to mental objects and mental states (e.g., Zalta 2001). Concepts are said, then, to be the constituents of propositions, and they mediate between thought and language, on the one hand, and referents, on the other (Margolis and Laurence 2008). It is necessary, however, to find a common ground between the Fregean notion of “sense” to which philosophers such as Zalta appeal and Vygotsky’s distinction between “sense” and “meaning.” This is, however, work to be done in the future, since this is not the space to go deeper in the issue.
- 6.
It is important to consider that the investigation of axiological commitments is a recent addition to the research program (see Mattos, Chap. 10, this volume), which has not been incorporated to a great extent in most of the empirical studies included in this book.
- 7.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be framed in two different manners, committed to either linguistic determinism or linguistic relativity, i.e., there are two different ways of interpreting the idea that the language a person speaks is connected with differences in her conceptualization of the world. Linguistic determinism is a strong version of the hypothesis stating that the language determines thought, and linguistic categories both limit and determine cognitive categories. Linguistic relativity is a weaker doctrine, stating that the language one speaks influences how one thinks (Margolis and Laurence 2008), or, to put it differently, that differences in the way language encodes cognitive categories influence thought. We do not need to subscribe to the too strong thesis of linguistic determinism in order to support the claim of a close relationship between modes of thinking and ways of speaking. The weaker thesis of linguistic relativity is enough to sustain this claim, since from the influence of language on thought, a close connection can follow, without being a deterministic relationship.
- 8.
We will not deal with the methodology of conceptual profile construction in detail here, but just highlight some aspects relevant to the arguments at stake. We refer the reader to the Chap. 3 on methodology in this volume.
- 9.
It is important to stress that we are not proposing the existence of biunivocal relationships between genetic domains and sources of data, but only illustrating some relationships that have been useful in previous investigations about conceptual profiles.
- 10.
To be entirely clear, we are not claiming that the conceptual profile approach has, in any sense, solved the philosophical problem of demarcation. We are speaking here about demarcation as a situated process, related to pragmatic reasoning in connection with particular problems, and also as a hypothetical and ongoing process, in which people will choose some modes of approaching a problem and use them, and the pragmatic value of modes of thinking will be increased or decreased for them, depending on how successful they deal with the problem by using a specific approach. It is not inconsequential, thus, that we refer to demarcation by focusing on contexts of application.
- 11.
Do we need to be committed to the idea that every time one says “please, bring me a warm woolen coat,” one is thinking of heat as a substance and as being proportional to temperature? Not really. Our claim is different, to the effect that it states that when one says “please, bring me a warm woolen coat,” one is, often inadvertently, reinforcing that way of thinking, even though it may not come to her conscious attention, and, even, it might be rejected by her, if she became conscious of the implications, in terms of modes of thinking, of what she is saying. Nevertheless, she will continue to use that way of speaking and thinking, despite the moment of rejection, because it continues to fulfill some role in culture, properly functioning in an appropriate context.
- 12.
This does not mean that the students will necessarily opt for the scientific mode of thinking every time they face a context in which scientific ideas are pragmatically powerful. We should remember that choices about ways of thinking do not take place by means of rational appraisals only. Many contextual and affective factors are involved in such choices, and if we neglect them, we will be committed to a view of cold cognition, as we see in the first version of Posner and colleagues’ (1982) model of conceptual change (see Pintrich et al. 1993). Nevertheless, we think it is important to emphasize the rational element when addressing in science classrooms the metacognitive goal of becoming aware of the multiplicity of modes of thinking and their contexts of application. This does not mean that we should not consider the affective and contextual dimension of decision-making but rather that we need to strive to educate our students so that they are capable of judging the reasons that may or may not justify a given choice of way of thinking about particular, concrete situations. We agree with Smith and Siegel’s (2004) in that a capacity of justifying ideas (and decisions) is also a dimension of understanding, as a goal of science teaching.
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Mortimer, E.F., Scott, P., do Amaral, E.M.R., El-Hani, C.N. (2014). Conceptual Profiles: Theoretical-Methodological Bases of a Research Program. In: Mortimer, E., El-Hani, C. (eds) Conceptual Profiles. Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9246-5_1
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