Learner conceptual categorization of food within a developing context.
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Date
2012
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Abstract
This study explored patterns of conceptual knowledge organization using a word
association task among Grade 8 learners at an Ex-Model C school. The goal was to show
links between conceptual knowledge development and the social and political context of
learners, their individual characteristics and preferences, and the ways they individually
went about their learning and thinking.This study was undertaken in the Pietermaritzburg
area at a school that draws the majority of its student population from its immediate
vicinity, the surrounding townships, the Eastern Cape and a small number from the
surrounding communities.
A quantitative and qualitative research methodology was employed in this study
using an experimental research design. Three experimental tasks were replicated from
Ross and Murphy (1999) with learners across Grade 8 in a developing context. This study
explored how Grade 8 learners represented, accessed, and made inferences about a real
world category; food, that is complex multi-dimentional and multi-hierarchical, and
cross-classificatory. The learners were selected randomly and included a good
representation of the schools demographics. Different sets of learners were used in each
task. The learners’ groupings and rationales for the category generating, rating, and
sorting experiments were recorded on data schedules.
The researcher utilized an experiment used by Bernstein (1970), Holland (1981)
and Hoadley (2005) in their studies to show how working class and middle class children
differently organized knowledge at the conceptual level. Other than the above research
there have also been further, perhaps even more sophisticated, food classification
experiments that have been completed. I focus on these latter experiments to grapple with
some of the main claims provided in gthe above works.
Experimental research was used to gather data. The experimental research design
included the following experimental tasks: category generating, category rating and
category sorting. Interviews were carried out to obtain a deeper understanding of why the
learners made certain choices and to clarify responses offered in the experiments.
No strong conclusions were drawn from this limited sample. Nevertheless there
was a notable insufficiency in the learner’s usage of taxonomic categories. A small
proportion of the subjects were able to categorise and organise food items by their
macronutrients, suggesting a taxonomic chain.
The study also revealed that there were categories that did show groupings of foods
of the same consecutive kinds. However, they pointed instead to the situation of the
event, or healthiness of the food item. Food items were found to be typical members of
both taxonomic and thematic categories. The default (non-directed) group results showed
that its sortings were heavily influenced by script or thematic categories. Hence, the
subjects in this sample displayed a weakness to organise knowledge taxonomically.
Description
Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.
Keywords
Learning, Psychology of., Theses--Education.