Search results for "conceptual change"

Constructivism in Science Education: The Need for a Clear Line of Demarcation

2003

Some voices have recently begun to question the constructivist positions, which have been considered the most important contribution of the last decades in science education. It could be thought then, that the“constructivist consensus” might just be a new fashion that would once again lead us back to the immovable reception model of science learning. This questions, at the same time, the idea of an advance in the field of science education towards the construction of a coherent body of knowledge.

Towards expert knowledge? A comparison between a constructivist and a traditional learning environment in the university

1999

Abstract This research monograph examines the potential of constructivist learning environments for developing prerequisites of expert knowledge during university studies. Drawing on recent theories of the development of expert knowledge and on the constructivist view of learning, an experiment was conducted in an educational psychology course. The primary purpose of the study was to compare the learning outcomes of students who studied the course material in a constructivist learning environment with those of students who learned it under traditional teaching and studying conditions. Students in the constructivist learning environment acquired more diversified knowledge. In addition, a the…

Union Citizenship Representing Conceptual (Dis)continuities in EU Documents on Citizenship and Culture

2014

The question in this article is how citizenship is reinvented and recontextualized in a newly founded European Union after the launching of Union Citizenship. What kind of conceptions of citizenship are produced in this new and evolving organization? The research material consists of documents presented by EU organs from 1994 to 2007 concerning eight EU programs on citizenship and culture. I will analyze conceptual similarities (continuities) and differences (discontinuities) between these documents and previous conceptualizations in various contexts, including citizenship discussions in the history of integration since the 1970s as well as theories of democracy and nation-states. Based on …

Quentin Skinner's rhetoric of conceptual change

1997

Between historical semantics and pragmatics

2006

This paper discusses the methodology of conceptual history, a branch of the study of the history of political thought which focuses on the changing meanings of political concepts over the course of time. It is suggested here that methodological disputes among historians of political thought frequently arise out of differing theories of language and meaning and that historians should be more open-minded to the idea of combining various research strategies in their work. Conceptual history, for instance, can be viewed as the combination of historical versions of semantics and pragmatics. While the study of the macro-level semantic changes in the language of politics can reveal interesting lon…

REHABILITATING THE POLITICIAN ON A NEGLECTED GENRE IN POLITICAL THEORIZING

2002

The relatively rare defences of politicians, responding to commonplace denounciations, form a neglected genre of political theorizing. Max Weber's famous ‘Politik als Beruf’ (1919) serves here as a point of departure for the analysis of the examples of Louis Barthou, F.C. Oliver, J.D.B. Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre. The rehabilitation signifies a conceptual change through rhetorical redescription, as suggested by Quentin Skinner.

Learning difficulties and conceptual, methodological and axiological change (I)

2009

El trabajo se inicia mostrando la relacion que se establecio entre la filosofia de la ciencia, la psicologia del aprendizaje y la didactica de las ciencias, que lleva a la consolidacion de esta, en particular, con los estudios de las concepciones alternativas. Pero las dificultades de los estudiantes no pueden reducirse a las concepciones alternativas. Por eso es conveniente ampliar el concepto de dificultades de aprendizaje e incluir dificultades debidas al razonamiento de ‘sentido comun’, a las actitudes negativas de los estudiantes, etc. En consecuencia, un cambio exclusivamente conceptual no tiene en cuenta estas nuevas dificultades y son necesarios otros cambios. Pero sobre ellos exist…

The Uses of the Imagination in Moral Neuroeducation

2019

In contrast to influential theories that focus on top-down, deliberative reasoning, triune ethics theory seeks to gather findings from neurobiology, affective neuroscience, and cognitive science and integrate them into a bottom-up theory that focuses on that motivational orientations that are rooted in experientially formed, evolved, unconscious emotional systems. Triune ethics theory identifies three basic attractors for moral functioning based on brain evolution: safety, engagement and imagination. It proposes an integrative ethical education model based on the notion of a moral imagination, which can enhance moral development. It integrates, on the one hand, John Dewey’s theory of moral …

On the Standards of Conceptual Change

2019

Abstract It is a necessary condition for recognising change that there is a yardstick against which the change can be perceived. The same applies to changes that philosophical concepts undergo. This paper delineates standards for recognising conceptual change that meet the requirements of conscientious history of philosophy. More particularly, we want to argue for the need of what we will call non-textual standards. These are features of the world of experience that must be assumed to be shared between us and the historical authors we study. While they must be used in tandem with the recognised contextual standards of conceptual change, we will argue that without recourse to at least some n…