Identifying didactic and sociocultural obstacles to conceptualization through statistical implicative analysis

Abstract

To understand culture 's relationship to cognition, this field has studied children or adults with little schooling and often alien to well-educated Western culture. Traditionally centered on extra-curricular knowledge, school-based variables must be considered: written culture and teaching/learning strategies can generate obstacles to conceptualization. Subjects are adults who studied at least three years at university: some are professionals. Data was from short clinical-style interviews as well as a questionnaire based survey taken from an observational sample. To find regularities linked to conceptual strength, S.I.A. determined implicative rules between responses and pre-ordered structures. Results suggested representations linked to specific conceptual aspects constitute didactical and/or socio-cultural obstacles. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.