Conceptual profile as a model of a complex world

Abstract

The conceptual profile theory is considered in this chapter from a sociocultural-historical perspective. From this point of view, this theory can be a candidate to represent the teaching-learning process in formal or nonformal school activities. Therefore, some aspects of this theory will be considered in order to point out the need for an approach relating the complexity of the world and language with the structural complexity of the subjects’ cognitive states. Our main working hypothesis is that the subjects’ cognitive structures are constituted with the intermediation of language. We consider that this complex structure is mediated and constituted by language and represent several different hierarchical levels of the potential complex relations among things in the world. We also stress the fact that conceptual profiles allow us to represent learning in context, dealing with the complexity of the cultural and historical dimensions of the representations used in our daily life. Finally, we understand that the structural complexity of the embodied and situated cognitive states could be expressed by a complex conceptual profile enabling us to represent not only its epistemological and ontological but also its axiological dimensions. In this work we intend to explore some potentialities of the conceptual profile theory.