Scientific knowledge and Teaching concepts

Before this, we've learnt that science consists of 3 elements, which are scientific knowledge, scientific skills and scientific attitude. So, on today's lecture, we learn about scientific knowledge and teaching theories. 

Scientific knowledge has 4 DIFFERENT items in it. They are facts, concepts, theories and principle. They might look the same, but they are actually different! So, lets define them to have a better understanding.

• Fact is a single sentence where truth is defined. Fact is the foundation of all other 3.

• Concepts is an abstraction of events, objects, or phenomena that seem to have certain properties or attributes in common.

• Principle and law is a composition of facts and concepts. It is observable and can be accepted in every places, such as Newton's Law.

• Theories is statements devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted. So, theories can be argued!

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Next, lets learn about teaching concepts. There are 5 teaching concepts;

• Giving examples and non-examples

• The use of advance organizer such as concept maps

• The use of images and analogies

• The use of various presentations such as models and symbols

• The use of experiments

Giving examples and non-examples

To use this in teaching, a teacher should give the student examples or non-examples that has different properties but they quite similar. For example, transpiration and evaporation. 

Advance organizer - concept maps

Advance organizer is a graphical representation of relationship among items. It is also a way of structuring information which arranging important aspects of concepts/topic into a pattern using labels. 

Concept map can be used as an overview of the topic which is it is shown before the teacher start to teach the topic. So, the student can have overview of what they are going to learn in this topic. 

Besides that, it can be used as summary to the topic. By showing this concept map at the end of topic, student can have better understanding as they recall what they have learnt in the particular topic. Moreover, teacher can detect any misconception in students by doing evaluation. 

There are several types of concept map;

• Hierarchical concept maps

• Cluster concept maps

• Chain concept maps

Steps in constructing concept maps can be simplified as below;

Images and analogies

Images and analogies are used to introduce the target concept. Image in this context represent mental images.

To create an analogy, we must identify the relevant features of the analog. Besides that, there must be similarities, especially in FUNCTION between the analog and the target. 


For example, DNA molecule is like a ladder is not a good analogy, compared to eye is like a camera. Finally, teacher should identify the comparisons for which the analogy breaks down.

Models and Symbols

• Model

• Symbol