Concepts and Frames
At a glance
Schon’s claim
A situation can be conceived in many ways, but it is always a concept-structured situation. Concepts decide what gets seen.
What this means in practice
- Few concepts means seeing only part of the room
- New concepts open up new parts of reality
- Two teachers in the same classroom often see different lessons
The three phases of concept formation
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Perception | Experience or learning starts the process |
| Abstraction | The mind picks out what is common and drops what is not |
| Generalisation | After many such observations, a general idea forms |
Two teachers walk into the same lesson. One leaves with five things to think about. The other leaves with one. The classroom did not change. The concepts each teacher carried into the room did.
Concepts are the cognitive tools we use to perceive a situation. They do more than label what is in front of us. They decide what we are able to see in the first place.
Schon’s claim about concept-structured situations
Donald Schon argued that while a situation can be conceived in many ways, it is always a concept-structured situation. There is no neutral viewing. The teacher’s existing concepts choose what counts as a fact, what counts as background, and what counts as nothing at all.
This claim is unsettling. It means that improving practice is not only about gathering more accurate information. It is also about widening the range of concepts available for reading the information.
A teacher with concepts only for “well-behaved” and “disruptive” sees a classroom in two colours. A teacher with concepts for engagement, social anxiety, executive function, peer dynamics, and language confidence sees the same classroom in more shades and can act with more precision.
Concepts enable perception and understanding
The familiar saying that we see what we look for has a sharper version here. We see what we have concepts for. The rest passes by unnoticed.
Three consequences follow.
- A small concept set means a small perceived reality. Most of what happens in a busy classroom stays invisible to the teacher whose concept toolkit is limited.
- Adding a concept is like turning on a light in a dark room. A teacher who learns the concept of cognitive load suddenly notices things they used to miss: the moment students stop tracking, the precise example that pushed working memory over the edge.
- Removing a faulty concept matters as much as adding a good one. Letting go of “lazy student” frees the teacher to notice the actual behaviour that was being grouped under that label.
A reflective practitioner with a thin concept set sees only a small part of what is actually being looked at. The aim of conceptual learning is to enlarge that part.
How a concept gets formed
Concepts do not arrive ready-made. They build up over time through three phases.
Perception
The starting point is experience or learning in some form. A teacher notices something specific. Maybe a particular student looks lost during group work three weeks running. Maybe a colleague describes a similar pattern.
Without perception of an instance, no concept can begin. A teacher who never observes carefully has no raw material for concept formation.
Abstraction
The mind looks at several perceived instances and pulls out what they share. Details that vary get set aside. Details that recur get held onto.
The teacher in the example above might notice that in each case, the lost student was paired with a much faster partner, that the task involved a step the lost student had not mastered, and that nobody asked them to contribute. The shared feature is something like “structural exclusion in mixed-pace pair work.”
This stage is mental work. It does not happen automatically from collecting examples. It requires the teacher to look at instances side by side and ask what runs through them.
Generalisation
After enough abstractions, a general idea emerges. The teacher no longer needs the specific cases. They have a working concept that applies to a class of situations.
The new concept can now be used to scan future classrooms. The teacher will spot the pattern earlier the next time. The concept becomes part of what they perceive with, not just what they think about.
Perception, abstraction, generalisation
Perception is the experience that starts the process. Abstraction is the mind picking out what is common across several instances and dropping what varies. Generalisation forms a working idea that can be applied to a class of new situations.
Why this matters for reflection
Reflection done with thin concepts reproduces the teacher’s existing view. Reflection done while expanding concepts changes what the teacher can see.
Two practical points follow.
Reflection should produce concepts, not just records
A reflection that ends with “today’s lesson was hard” has produced a record. A reflection that ends with “I now see a pattern of structural exclusion in my pair-work design” has produced a concept. The second kind feeds future perception. The first does not.
Reading and dialogue widen the concept set
The fastest way to add concepts is to encounter ones the teacher does not already have. Reading research, talking with colleagues who use different language, and studying named theories like Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development all enlarge the available toolkit.
A teacher who reflects only on their own teaching, in their own words, with their own existing concepts, drifts in a small circle. A teacher who brings in concepts from outside the circle moves.