Concept-based Approaches Research Articles

Exploring the adoption of concept-based curricula: insights from educators and implications for change.

Concept-based approaches to curriculum design have been proposed to solve content and curricula overload and promote conceptual learning. Few health professions have adopted this approach and little is known about how to support this educational change. We aimed to understand how nutrition and dietetics educators may navigate proposed education change towards concept-based curricula. We employed an interpretivist approach and in-depth interviews that explored the views of nutrition and dietetic educators towards using a concept-based approach to curriculum. Employing deductive thematic analysis based on the diffusion of innovation theory, data from twenty experienced dietetics educators were analysed. Three main themes were identified; the need for change champions, concerns about change, and the complexity of the education system. Diffusion of innovation theory highlighted that to enact change, the relative advantage and compatibility of the approach with current structures and systems, with evidence from trialling and observing the new approach in action, were needed. Developing education leaders and infiltrating the social system of education through existing communities of practice is critical to enacting educational change.

Concept-based Lesion Aware Transformer for Interpretable Retinal Disease Diagnosis.

Existing deep learning methods have achieved remarkable results in diagnosing retinal diseases, showcasing the potential of advanced AI in ophthalmology. However, the black-box nature of these methods obscures the decision-making process, compromising their trustworthiness and acceptability. Inspired by the concept-based approaches and recognizing the intrinsic correlation between retinal lesions and diseases, we regard retinal lesions as concepts and propose an inherently interpretable framework designed to enhance both the performance and explainability of diagnostic models. Leveraging the transformer architecture, known for its proficiency in capturing long-range dependencies, our model can effectively identify lesion features. By integrating with image-level annotations, it achieves the alignment of lesion concepts with human cognition under the guidance of a retinal foundation model. Furthermore, to attain interpretability without losing lesion-specific information, our method employs a classifier built on a cross-attention mechanism for disease diagnosis and explanation, where explanations are grounded in the contributions of human-understandable lesion concepts and their visual localization. Notably, due to the structure and inherent interpretability of our model, clinicians can implement concept-level interventions to correct the diagnostic errors by simply adjusting erroneous lesion predictions. Experiments conducted on four fundus image datasets demonstrate that our method achieves favorable performance against state-of-the-art methods while providing faithful explanations and enabling conceptlevel interventions. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/Sorades/CLAT.

Variable functioning and its application to large scale steel frame design optimization

To solve complex real-world problems, heuristics and concept-based approaches can be used to incorporate information into the problem. In this study, a concept-based approach called variable functioning (Fx) is introduced to reduce the optimization variables and narrow down the search space. In this method, the relationships among one or more subsets of variables are defined with functions using information prior to optimization; thus, the function variables are optimized instead of modifying the variables in the search process. By using the problem structure analysis technique and engineering expert knowledge, the Fx method is used to enhance the steel frame design optimization process as a complex real-world problem. Herein, the proposed approach was coupled with particle swarm optimization and differential evolution algorithms then applied for three case studies. The algorithms are applied to optimize the case studies by considering the relationships among column cross-section areas. The results show that Fx can significantly improve both the convergence rate and the final design of a frame structure, even if it is only used for seeding.

‘You could win Masterchef with this soup. Can I get some more?’ Request production and the impact of instruction on young EFL learners

This paper presents a study exploring the impact of concept-based instruction of requests with two intact classes of young learners of English (aged 12–13) in a Norwegian primary school. Based on sociocultural theory, the instruction aimed to promote agentive language use by focusing on two main dimensions: firstly, introducing scientific concepts and language resources related to the pragmalinguistic dimension, i.e. internal and external modification strategies to increase the learners' pragmalinguistic repertoire; secondly, presenting the sociopragmatic dimension, such as the situation, familiarity, and interlocutor age. In this study, learners’ internalisation of pragmalinguistic resources, displayed through increased variation in language use, is viewed as a prerequisite for agency. The learners’ request production was tested through a video-prompted oral discourse completion test (VODCT) in a pre-, post- and delayed post-test. The results reveal an increased variation and use of modal verbs and supportive moves following the instruction. In addition, their distribution varied depending on the interlocutor's age and familiarity. The learners also started using downgraders introduced during instruction. However, except for please, downgraders were not commonly used, which suggests that these require further scholarly attention. Overall, the young learners’ pragmalinguistic development displayed in the present study reveals a potential for teaching pragmatics through concept-based approaches.

Scientific concepts as meaning-making resources for young EFL learners in the learning of pragmatics

This article reports on a study investigating the role of scientific concepts in the metapragmatic awareness of Norwegian primary EFL learners’ following a four-week instructional intervention on requesting informed by sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 2012/1934). Through introducing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic dimensions of requesting, the intervention aimed to develop metapragmatic awareness and foster learner agency by teaching pragmalinguistic resources related to request strategies; raising awareness of contextual considerations; and drawing attention to individual perceptions of appropriateness. The instruction focused on scientific concepts, that is, systematic and abstract objects of study which facilitate learner reflections. This article draws on data collected during group interviews to analyse whether learners used scientific concepts introduced during the instruction–for example, directness of the head act and attention getters–and if so, how these were used to express metapragmatic understandings. The analysis shows how such scientific concepts were internalised and used by learners to express their understandings of the importance of linguistic variation, the communicative functions of requests, and compare request strategies in English and Norwegian. Lived experiences, contextual considerations, and prior knowledge were also used as frames of reference for interpreting the appropriateness of requests. Adding to pragmatics research using concept-based approaches with (young) adults (e.g., van Compernolle, 2014), this study reveals that internalising a conceptual understanding of pragmatic phenomena in a foreign language is possible even for young language learners, thus contributing to knowledge about how learners come to understand pragmatic phenomena and how pragmatics can be taught with these age groups.

Alex, the toolmaker: Tool-and-result activity in the L2 learning context

The L2 field has seen recurrent calls for pedagogical approaches that, on the one hand, emphasize learner communicative needs as a starting point, and that, on the other hand, reexamine the importance of dialogic support offered to learners as they employ instructional materials during authentic tasks. Particular attention has been paid to overcoming this methodological gap within the L2 Vygotskian tradition, particularly through concept-based approaches. More recently, Poehner and Infante (2015, 2017) have proposed Mediated Development (MD), a framework for guiding dialogic interaction with learners intended to render concept-based instructional materials as cognitive tools to regulate learner L2 use. The present paper extends this work by examining a particular aspect of learner development: self-generated representations of an abstract linguistic concept. Analysis of recorded and transcribed interactions between a mediator and secondary school and university ESL learners reveals how modeling and controlled practice activities of the instructional materials, informed by the MD framework, were critical to participant ability to create original conceptual representations of the English tense-aspect system that elaborated the concepts presented by the mediator. We discuss this finding in relation to Newman and Holzman's (1993) proposal of tool-and-result as a Vygotskian methodology.

Concept-Based Learning for Capstone Clinical Experiences in Hospital and Community Settings.

Capstone clinical experiences provide opportunities for students to develop increasing competence and independence in nursing practice, as well as to focus on care that is fundamental to contemporary nursing practice. Increasingly in the United States, nursing practice is expanding to community settings, with enhanced focus on population health, whereas promoting safe practice within acute care settings remains an imperative. Student learning needs vary by the clinical setting as does delivery of clinical experiences and associated programmatic challenges. Yet, safe and effective practice is required in all environments. This article describes 2 concept-based approaches to promote deep understanding of key aspects of nursing care developed to manage specific challenges in hospital and community settings. Outcomes/Conclusions: Concept-based learning activities, used to promote deeper clinical thinking and integration of theory with practice, support students to develop increased competence in care of specific patient populations in both environments.

The acquisition of German declension in additive and concept-based approaches to instruction via computer-based cognitive tutors

AbstractThis study examines the different learning outcomes of two computer-based cognitive tutors using two approaches to instructing German declension: an additive, bottom-up approach, which focuses on a stepwise introduction of each case, and a concept-based, top-down approach, which focuses on developing students’ conceptual understanding of the functions related to each case form and the case marking system as a whole. The results indicate that both groups learned, but what and how they learned differed depending on the method of instruction. The additive group showed general gains in production and a slight increase in their ability to correctly interpret object-first sentences. The concept-based group showed larger gains, but in fewer areas. Specifically, the production of adjective endings increased, although there were no differences in determiner production or accuracy. The concept-based group also had a larger gain in their ability to interpret non-SVO word order sentences. This study shows how concept-based approaches to grammar can outperform additive ones, and that the development of these concepts can prepare students for future learning.

Using document analysis to identify core concepts for dietetics: The first step in promoting conceptual learning.

Concept-based approaches to curriculum design have been proposed in nursing and health sciences education to address the issue of content overload in curricula but have not been described in dietetics. This study aimed to identify core concepts for the dietetics discipline in Australia and investigate the commonality and differences in these concepts across different dietetic organizations across the world. This study used document analysis of a purposive sample of international dietetics competency or proficiency standards identified from English-speaking dietetic organizations worldwide. Content analysis was applied to the performance criteria or equivalent from 10 documents (nine organizations) to identify the most common elements. A total of 1,007 statements were analyzed. Fifty-six concepts were developed. The four most frequent concepts coded across all statements were "critical thinking," "communication," "nutrition and dietetic service," and "quality assurance and improvement." There were 55 concepts common to all standards. The concept of "food security" was not present in one of the standards from the United States. The concepts that emerged from this study were common across different English-speaking dietetic organizations across the world. Small differences on the emphasis of concepts, between different competency standards may reflect the health needs; health, political, economic, and social systems; and the cultural context of a country. Identifying core concepts in dietetics is the first step to help to inform curriculum design, which may address overcrowded curricular and promote conceptual learning.

Development of life cycle valuation with priority of national projects and energy efficiency

The paper studies changes in methodology for appraisal activity that pursues effective management of sustainable and breakthrough growth in economy and social sector through ensuring priorities of the National projects and resource efficiency when evaluating cost of life cycles as a result of value-centered management. Gravity to tackle economic problems of need to kick-start innovative high-tech investment cycles for the development of industries, enterprises and investment projects, built upon updated methodological framework for appraisal activity, defines the relevance of this study. In addition, a model to formalize processes of appraisal and management of costs and expenses in economic systems on the basis of life cycles of goods, products and services is proposed to be used as a bedrock of appraising concept. The goal of the study is to develop a set of sound methodological solutions for design of concepts of value appraisal of life cycles in appraisal activity in Russia. It should be done to make its reformation sufficient for cost management of sustainable and breakthrough growth of the country in social and economic fields through effective implementation of the National projects and resource efficiency. The objects of this study are processes of theoretical elaborations and concept-based approaches to the modeling of methodological grounds for value appraisal and management of life cycles of goods within the implementation of national projects by minimizing the cost of their cycles, lifecycle contract, total expenditures and ownership cost of life cycles based on the energy efficient and high-technology products. The applied methods dwell on a comprehensive approach which comprises analysis and synthesis, logical analysis, expert-based approach, methods of economic and mathematical modeling and forecasting.

Supporting student learning of chemical reaction engineering using a socially scaffolded virtual laboratory concept

This paper presents an example of open-ended problem solving in the field of chemical reaction engineering using the virtual laboratory (VL) concept. The study was structured as an educational design experiment, which used the VL concept in teaching chemical reaction engineering in the Chemical Engineering degree programme at the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT).The artificial reaction system used in the VL assignment consisted of a small set of coupled reactions in a homogeneous medium. The groups communicated with the ‘staff’ of the VL via Moodle’s discussion forum feature. The students gave written instructions about how and under what conditions their experiments should be performed. The experiments were conducted by the teacher, who ran the simulations using the parameters the students provided.The VL concept proved to be an efficient method for supporting the students’ ability to execute the various subtasks in reactor design in a professional manner. Students had to explicate their understanding of the task, and they could use their cognitive capacity on problem solving rather than the more technical or practical skills of data acquisition. For the teacher, the method provided an opportunity to scaffold the various student groups at different levels. It also helped to distinguish between groups using concept-based approaches and equation-based approaches and to guide the latter toward the approach used by the former.

A systematic literature review on opinion types and sentiment analysis techniques

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to map the evidence provided on the review types, and explain the challenges faced by classification techniques in sentiment analysis (SA). The aim is to understand how traditional classification technique issues can be addressed through the adoption of improved methods.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of literature was used to search published articles between 2002 and 2014 and identified 24 papers that discuss regular, comparative, and suggestive reviews and the related SA techniques. The authors formulated and applied specific inclusion and exclusion criteria in two distinct rounds to determine the most relevant studies for the research goal.FindingsThe review identified nine practices of review types, eight standard machine learning classification techniques and seven practices of concept learning Sentic computing techniques. This paper offers insights on promising concept-based approaches to SA, which leverage commonsense knowledge and linguistics for tasks such as polarity detection. The practical implications are also explained in this review.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings provide information for researchers and traders to consider in relation to a variety of techniques for SA such as Sentic computing and multiple opinion types such as suggestive opinions.Originality/valuePrevious literature review studies in the field of SA have used simple literature review to find the tasks and challenges in the field. In this study, a systematic literature review is conducted to find the more specific answers to the proposed research questions. This type of study has not been conducted in the field previously and so provides a novel contribution. Systematic reviews help to reduce implicit researcher bias. Through adoption of broad search strategies, predefined search strings and uniform inclusion and exclusion criteria, systematic reviews effectively force researchers to search for studies beyond their own subject areas and networks.

Metaphors and grammar teaching

Abstract Despite the need for transparency and efficiency in explaining grammatical features to learners of a foreign language only very few systematic attempts have been undertaken to demonstrate the pedagogical added value of concept-based approaches to grammar instruction. The purpose of the paper is (1) to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of such an approach, to (2) present relevant theories of multimedia learning and (3) to summarize some empirical evidence on the efficiency of such an approach to language teaching and learning. The concept-based animated grammar, developed for German, uses a broad range of cognitive linguistic principles for foreign language learning in such areas as, for example, modal verbs or the passive voice.

Concept-based item representations for a cross-lingual content-based recommendation process

The growth of the Web is the most influential factor that contributes to the increasing importance of text retrieval and filtering systems. On one hand, the Web is becoming more and more multilingual, and on the other hand users themselves are becoming increasingly polyglot. In this context, platforms for intelligent information access as search engines or recommender systems need to evolve to deal with this increasing amount of multilingual information. This paper proposes a content-based recommender system able to generate cross-lingual recommendations. The idea is to exploit user preferences learned in a given language, to suggest item in another language. The main intuition behind the work is that, differently from keywords which are inherently language dependent, concepts are stable across different languages, allowing to deal with multilingual and cross-lingual scenarios. We propose four knowledge-based strategies to build concept-based representation of items, by relying on the knowledge contained in two knowledge sources, i.e. Wikipedia and BabelNet. We learn user profiles by leveraging the different concept-based representations, in order to define a cross-lingual recommendation process. The empirical evaluation carried out on two state of the art datasets, DBbook and Movielens, shows that concept-based approaches are suitable to provide cross-lingual recommendations, even though there is not a clear advantage of using one of the different proposed representations. However, it emerges that most of the times the approaches based on BabelNet outperform those based on Wikipedia, which clearly shows the advantage of using a native multilingual knowledge source.

Leveraging concept-based approaches to identify potential phyto-therapies

The potential of plant-based remedies has been documented in both traditional and contemporary biomedical literature. Such types of text sources may thus be sources from which one might identify potential plant-based therapies (“phyto-therapies”). Concept-based analytic approaches have been shown to uncover knowledge embedded within biomedical literature. However, to date there has been limited attention towards leveraging such techniques for the identification of potential phyto-therapies. This study presents concept-based analytic approaches for the retrieval and ranking of associations between plants and human diseases. Focusing on identification of phyto-therapies described in MEDLINE, both MeSH descriptors used for indexing and MetaMap inferred UMLS concepts are considered. Furthermore, the identification and ranking consider both direct (i.e., plant concepts directly correlated with disease concepts) and inferred (i.e., plant concepts associated with disease concepts based on shared signs and symptoms) relationships. Based on the two scoring methodologies used in this study, it was found that a Vector Space Model approach outperformed probabilistic reliability based inferences. An evaluation of the approach is provided based on therapeutic interventions catalogued in both ClinicalTrials.gov and NDF-RT. The promising findings from this feasibility study highlight the challenges and applicability of concept-based analytic strategies for distilling phyto-therapeutic knowledge from text based knowledge sources like MEDLINE.

The use of additive composition in arithmetic: the case of children classified as low attainers

This study investigated the conceptual understanding that low-attaining children have and are able to use in arithmetic. Fifteen 6–7 year old children solved pairs of conceptually-related addition problems. Conceptual relations between equal problems were constructed to reflect aspects of the principle of additive composition. Children's conceptual understanding was explored by examining their capability to use concept-based approaches in related problems, and ability to recognise and explain additive composition relationships. The findings indicate that, when prompted, children who employ only basic calculation procedures have the capability to recognise and use additive composition relations in problem solving. Almost all children showed increased sensitivity to additive composition relations when asked to explain the equality between related problems. Our findings highlight the need to develop pedagogical approaches that instigate low-attaining children's conceptual capabilities and support the operationalisation of these in the kinds of concept-based strategies that are most typically ascribed to high-attaining children.

Information retrieval with concept-based pseudo-relevance feedback in MEDLINE

Although using domain specific knowledge sources for information retrieval yields more accurate results compared to pure keyword-based methods, more improvements can be achieved by considering both relations between concepts in an ontology and also their statistical dependencies over the corpus. In this paper, an innovative approach named concept-based pseudo-relevance feedback is introduced for improving accuracy of biomedical retrieval systems. Proposed method uses a hybrid retrieval algorithm for discovering relevancy between queries and documents which is based on a combination of keyword- and concept-based approaches. It also uses a pseudo-relevance feedback mechanism for expanding initial queries with auxiliary biomedical concepts extracted from top-ranked results of hybrid information retrieval. Using concept-based similarities makes it possible for the system to detect related documents to users’ queries, which are semantically close to each other while not necessarily sharing common keywords. In addition, expanding initial queries with concepts introduced by pseudo-relevance feedback captures those relations between queries and documents, which rely on statistical dependencies between concepts they contain. As a matter of fact, these relations may remain undetected, examining merely existing links between concepts in an external knowledge source. Proposed approach is evaluated using OHSUMED test collection and standard evaluation methods from text retrieval conference (TREC). Experimental results on MEDLINE documents (in OHSUMED collection) show 21% improvement over keyword-based approach in terms of mean average precision, which is a noticeable gain.

Weed management practices in natural ecosystems: a critical overview

Increasing public pressure against the use of pesticides and other agricultural inputs has placed increased emphasis on the development of ecologically based pest management. One distinct reaction of the Weed Science discipline has been the swing away from herbicide research to increased research on the basic biology and ecology of weeds in hopes of reduced reliance on "technological crutches" such as herbicides and other practices that are potentially harmful to the environment. Biological control is the long-standing alternative to the use of herbicides and interest in the former practice has been boosted by the realization that the use of herbicides may lead to the development of herbicide resistance in weed populations, and that herbicide residues occur in surface and groundwater. Supporters of herbicide use would point out that biological control is generally not effective in crop production systems, and is basically slow-acting. Debates between protagonists for the exclusive use of one or the other weed management practice tend to obscure the benefits that integration of different techniques are likely to have. For natural ecosystems it is proposed that integration of the more subtle practice of biological control with the use of herbicides, which relatively quickly overwhelm a biological system with mortality, is likely to be the most effective weed management tool. Different weed management practices that could be considered in natural ecosystems are discussed in terms of three key performance rating criteria, viz. activity, selec- tivity and persistence In this concise review, general discussion is focussed on the fundamentals of weed management practices, with the view to promote concept-based approaches that are critical for the development of effective weed management strate- gies.

OBSERVER: An Approach for Query Processing in Global Information Systems Based on Interoperation Across Pre-Existing Ontologies

There has been an explosion in the types, availability and volume of data accessible in an information system, thanks to the World Wide Web (the Web) and related inter-networking technologies. In this environment, there is a critical need to replace or complement earlier database integration approaches and current browsing and keyword-based techniques with concept-based approaches. Ontologies are increasingly becoming accepted as an important part of any concept or semantics based solution, and there is increasing realization that any viable solution will need to support multiple ontologies that may be independently developed and managed. In particular, we consider the use of concepts from pre-existing real world domain ontologies for describing the content of the underlying data repositories. The most challenging issue in this approach is that of vocabulary sharing, which involves dealing with the use of different terms or concepts to describe similar information. In this paper, we describe the architecture, design and implementation of the OBSERVER system. Brokering across the domain ontologies is enabled by representing and utilizing interontology relationships such as (but not limited to) synonyms, hyponyms and hypernyms across terms in different ontologies. User queries are rewritten by using these relationships to obtain translations across ontologies. Well established metrics like precision and recall based on the extensions underlying the concepts are used to estimate the loss of information, if any.