Concepts and facts... These sound like two very simple items, yet instead they were quite troubling throughout the unit. When asked to create a dichotomy of concept vs fact, I ran into trouble. When does a fact become a concept or a concept become a fact? I found that the context and application of each topic could lead to an ambiguity where that topic could be both fact and concept. Can one item be both fact and concept?
If the definition of fact vs concept is the degree of connectivity, the degree of investigabilty, or the specificity of topic, then any given topic remains in an indeterminate status until its role amongst the broader (or more specific) contents.
The other major component of this week involved investigable vs noninvestigable questions. This distinction proved useful in assisting with the development of concept and fact frameworks. With its emphasis on engagement and interactivity, inquiry thrives on investigation. Creating questions in which students can investigate, experience, and influence the results leads to greater inquiry, concrete results, and less abstraction.
But does the degree of invesitgability rely on the question or the student? Can the same question be of greater investigability than another when asked of different groups of students? Investigability emphasizes the placement of ideas into testable format. For some students, this may need to be explicitly broken into itemized questions, whereas students of higher abilities may be able to investigate independently from the larger concept questions.
One of the difficulties I am experiencing in this course is the frequent request to identify as explicitly either/or, without regard to context of student, topic, or situation. If inquiry is a continuum based concept, then does each item within inquiry similarly belong on a continuum?
(Jeff Menaker)
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