Teaching occurs in the structure of making discoveries.

Teaching occurs in the structure of making discoveries.

When creating conceptual workshops, “workshop designers must find ways to lead the students to construct the knowledge they would have them understand.  The designers must devise "conceptual activities" for students--individual and group activities that provoke the students to alter their conceptual structures”.

Here is an opportunity for you to participate in an exercise  used in a 1997 workshop Finkel facilitated. 

Situation: Alphonso, an exchange student from Moravia, is living with you for six months.  He has become fascinated with trying to understand the game of baseball.  The three main sports in Moravia are soccer, tennis, and tag (which is played in a series of intricate versions).  You and Alphonso have watched baseball games together on TV, but he consistently misunderstands the game, because he relates everything to the three sports he knows. So you undertake a more systematic approach to teaching Alphonso about the game of baseball.

Describe a network of concepts that are central to an understanding of baseball.  This network should consist of a small number of interconnected concepts (4-8) and should provide an underlying framework for understanding.  However, don't spend time deciding which concept is THE most important one.  On the other hand, you should be able to tell how the concepts are related.  As you think of the concepts, you might think of critical moments in the game that are described in terms of them.

If you would like to see how the rest of the conceptual workshop progresses, please visit: http://academic.evergreen.edu/f/fordter/finkel.htm