...On Concepts-oriented Teaching

 

I start with a disclaimer – I do not know what is “Concept-orientation”, not just in education, but in everything; like, when movie-critics say, “... the director has taken too much liberty in translating the concepts of the author of the book on which the movie is based)...”; pretty much the same thing applies to the choice of the playing XI in any format of cricket matches. When one criticizes the choices someone else has made, unless the motives are clear, “Concept-orientation” is as fluid as it can get. This, I feel is an eminently defendable point.

Yet, in education, the idea of “Concept-orientation” has taken a strong hold and is likely to become a meme in short order. I take a contrarian view.

“Concepts” are not written-in-stone ideas; they are, rather emergent – depending on the circumstances. I will take the Euro-centric idea that led to someone running naked shouting “Eureka!” sometime ago.

The idea must have been churning in his mind for sometime before it “emerged” in his bathtub!

For concepts to emerge, there is a need for an enabling eco-sphere. The bathtub was one. However, can we not imagine a teacher immersing herself in a metaphorical “bathtub” while teaching?

Don’t answer that.

Bathtub or not, there is a pool of mindscapes in a class room – the teacher is just one drop in the pool, though possibly primus inter pares.

It is from this position of “First among equals”, teachers have to entice students to be part of the pool, to dive head first. I use the word entice advisedly – in the sense of “tempt”. The teacher, whatever may be the situation, should handle it with equanimity – treat dissent, even ridicule, with no discernible irritation, not to mention anger. If the answer is wrong, the teacher should treat it as a boon to set the matter right. Treat students, even if they do not treat themselves such, as emerging from their cocoons.  

I readily admit that it has taken perhaps more than three semesters of teaching to develop this quality within myself. But, I claim that I am not immune from relapsing into it. I make myself consciously aware of it. This is a necessary ingredient of being primus inter pares.

No one can define “Concepts”. Apologies for evoking what an US Supreme Court judge said once as to defining “Obscenity”. He said he cannot define obscenity, but added that he could identify it when he saw one.

It is precisely the same with “Concept”. That man in the olden days suddenly shouted “Eureka” when he immersed himself in the eco-sphere, the bathtub, both in reality and metaphorically.

A more immediate example that I proffer: ask your students why they point a double convex lens perpendicular to the rays of the sun (as perpendicular as they can judge), hold a piece of paper as perpendicular to the sun’s rays as possible to estimate the focal length of the lens. They could – as one of my students did – answer that the rays from the sun are parallel.

This is the point at which the teacher could shout “Eureka”, establishing the necessary analogy to taking the gravitational force at every point on the trajectory of a projectile perpendicular to the flat ground! The gravitational force at all the points are parallel!

Please understand the point I am making: The “Concept” emerges from the interactions, through similitude, with the students, the class room being the enabling eco-sphere.

The teacher cannot give up on extracting comments from the class, a necessary and sufficient condition for building up a “Conceptual Teaching” eco-sphere.

Just do the right thing!

Raghuram Ekambaram