(S1,Ep3) What is a Concept?

Jan. 27, 2012 interview on Vygotsky's theory of concepts with Andy Blunden, author of Concepts, A Critical Approach (available here: brill.nl/concepts). Part 2/2: Andy discusses the development of true concepts, covering topics such as word meaning & definitions, artifacts & actions, social knowledge, ideal lines of development, spontaneous & scientific concepts, and flowers & freeways. (Originally published at Chats about CHT http://tiny.cc/kmylsz)

Highlights include:

1:00 - "The first thing to get straight is that Vygotsky does not have a typology of concepts"

2:36 - Two lines of development: spontaneous and scientific concepts

7:28 - "Fundamentally, concepts are transmitters or containers or expressions or forms, whatever you like, of the wisdom of many generations...passed down through the generations by various means"

8:47 - Concepts are problems and solutions to those problems are encapsulated in a word and the systems of practice around that word, and possibly also in an artifact of some kind

12:08 - "A true concept has to incorporate that element of the transmission of socially, historically acquired knowledge."

15:58 - "Origin, path of development: one begins from book knowledge, the other begins from immediate personal interaction; any actual concept has its roots in both"

18:03 - "Everyday life is penetrated by knowledge that comes out of institutions"

20:27 - A concept is like a city...is a many sided thing, and it's realized in many ways

23:57 - "A concept is like a cloud, and word-meanings rain from this cloud" 26:11 - The relationship between the words 'flower' and 'rose'

29:56 - Romance and problem-solving ("ordinary, everyday people are becoming aficionados of the social sciences")

33:38 - "True" concepts - what is true about a concept is inaccessible through "spontaneous" alone

37:56 - "Vygotsky was an original thinker; the words didn't exist for what he was trying to say"

40:19 - "A unit of life -- a unit of a culture to be more specific -- is a concept, and more specifically it's a solved puzzle; it's the identification of a problem which arose in a specific way of life, and the naming of it, and the institution of a series of related practices organized around that solution. So that's what a concept it."

44:30 - "In the capacity of a teacher, V knew that real conceptual knowledge can only be acquired when it's the means to the solution to a problem"

49:49 - A compelling challenge for teachers: designing relevant instruction with Concept Development in mind (i.e., concepts as solutions to compelling problem)

"That's what a concept is: it's the identification of a problem and a solution that goes with it (or the solution and the problem that goes with it) within a specific system of practice, or institution -- because if you don't have some system of practice then problems never arise, because people just do something else."

References:

Paula Towsey on the Blocks Experiment: http://tiny.cc/ewb9hz

Andy Blunden's vimeo channel: http://tiny.cc/q2b9hz

CHAT on Vimeo: http://tiny.cc/z0b9hz