Concrete and abstract concepts in school age children

The aim of this study is to highlight what kind of information distinguishes abstract and concrete conceptual knowledge in different aged children. A familiarity-rating task has shown that 8-year-olds judged concrete concepts as very familiar while abstract concepts were judged as much less familiar with ratings increasing substantially from age 10 to age 12, according to literature showing that abstract terms are not mastered until adolescence (Schwanenflugel, 1991). The types of relation elicited by abstract and concrete concepts during development were investigated in an association production task. At all considered age levels, concrete concepts mainly activated attributive and thematic relations as well as, to a much lesser extent, taxonomic relations and stereotypes. Abstract concepts, instead, elicited mainly thematic relations and, to a much lesser extent, examples and taxonomic relations. The patterns of relations elicited were already differentiated by age 8, becoming more specific in abstract concepts with age.

Semantic markup in discussion fora

Discussion tools in existing LEs have few or no integrated tools to analyse student learning. This paper proposes tools not only for integrating social network analytics, but also why we need to semantically tag and track key concepts within posts in order to make student learning in discussions visible. This paper will argue for the importance of semantic markup in discussion tools using screenshots of existing LEs and UI mockups of semantically aware discussion tools to argue the case for this element of next generation LEs

Learning to 'understand backwards' in time: children's temporal cognition and the primary history curriculum

This study examines children’s temporal ways of knowing and it highlights the centrality of temporal cognition in the development of children’s historical understanding. It explores how young children conceptualise time and it examines the provision for temporal cognition at the levels of the intended, enacted and received history curriculum in the Irish primary school context. Positioning temporality as a prerequisite second-order concept, the study recognises the essential role of both first-order and additional second-order concepts in historical understanding. While the former can be defined as the basic, substantive content to be taught, the latter refers to a number of additional key concepts that are deemed fundamental to children's capacity to make meaningful sense of history. The study argues for due recognition to be given to temporality, in the belief that both sets of knowledge, the content and skills, are required to develop historical thinking (Lévesque, 2011). The study addresses a number of key research questions, using a mixed methods research design, comprising an analysis of history textbooks, a survey among final year student teachers about their teaching of history, and school-based interviews with primary school children: What opportunities are available for children to develop temporal ways of knowing? How do student teachers experience being apprenticed into the available culture for teaching history and understanding temporality at primary level? What insights do the cognitive-developmental and sociocultural perspectives on learning provide for understanding the dynamics of children’s temporal ways of knowing? The study argues that the skill of developing a deeper understanding of time is a key prerequisite in connecting with, and constructing, understandings and frameworks of the past. The study advances a view of temporality as complex, multi-faceted and developmental. The findings have a potential contribution to make in influencing policy and pedagogy in establishing an elaborated and well-defined curriculum framework for developing temporal cognition at both national and international levels.

Forces of agglomeration and dispersal in rural business networks: a social network analysis

Two concepts in rural economic development policy have been the focus of much research and policy action: the identification and support of clusters or networks of firms and the availability and adoption by rural businesses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). From a theoretical viewpoint these policies are based on two contrasting models, with clustering seen as a process of economic agglomeration, and ICT-mediated communication as a means of facilitating economic dispersion. The study’s conceptual framework is based on four interrelated elements: location, interaction, knowledge, and advantage, together with the concept of networks which is employed as an operationally and theoretically unifying concept. The research questions are developed in four successive categories: Policy, Theory, Networks, and Method. The questions are approached using a study of two contrasting groups of rural small businesses in West Cork, Ireland: (a) Speciality Foods, and (b) firms in Digital Products and Services. The study combines Social Network Analysis (SNA) with Qualitative Thematic Analysis, using data collected from semi-structured interviews with 58 owners or managers of these businesses. Data comprise relational network data on the firms’ connections to suppliers, customers, allies and competitors, together with linked qualitative data on how the firms established connections, and how tacit and codified knowledge was sourced and utilised. The research finds that the key characteristics identified in the cluster literature are evident in the sample of Speciality Food businesses, in relation to flows of tacit knowledge, social embedding, and the development of forms of social capital. In particular the research identified the presence of two distinct forms of collective social capital in this network, termed “community” and “reputation”. By contrast the sample of Digital Products and Services businesses does not have the form of a cluster, but matches more closely to dispersive models, or “chain” structures. Much of the economic and social structure of this set of firms is best explained in terms of “project organisation”, and by the operation of an individual rather than collective form of “reputation”. The rural setting in which these firms are located has resulted in their being service-centric, and consequently they rely on ICT-mediated communication in order to exchange tacit knowledge “at a distance”. It is this factor, rather than inputs of codified knowledge, that most strongly influences their operation and their need for availability and adoption of high quality communication technologies. Thus the findings have applicability in relation to theory in Economic Geography and to policy and practice in Rural Development. In addition the research contributes to methodological questions in SNA, and to methodological questions about the combination or mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods.