Distinguishing between Concepts and Generalizations

I really wanted to make a blog on the differences between concepts and generalizations, since this is something that I still need more understanding on, and is important for students to know and teachers to be able to teach! The textbook helped me understand the differences more clearly.



When it comes to generalizations, the definition that the textbook gives is that they are relationships between concepts.  In order for students to be able to understand generalizations, however, they must be able to construct concepts accurately. In other words, generalizations are the big ideas students get from reading.

However, it is still difficult to distinguish between generalizations and concepts. Therefore, it is important for students to learn and teachers to be able to understand that generalizations differ from facts and concepts because they:

Identify relationships between two or more concepts. 
Construct explanations of cause and effect. 
Enable predictions of future occurrence of the relationship stated in the generalization. 
An idea expressed in a complete sentence while a concept is expressed as a single word or as a short phrase. 
Are stated objectively and impersonally and require evidence to be gathered to support them. 

Here is an example of a generalization: "Revolution's change people's way of living because different opportunities for them to earn money become possible."

This generalization can be broken apart by the specific concepts that are included in the generalization. In this example specifically the concepts include: "revolution," "people's way of living," and "earning money." By using this generalization, students can examine the American Revolution to see if it can be supported by thus statement, and even other Revolutions in other countries such as Russia and France. If there is evidence in each of the cases, then the generalization becomes well-supported and accepted. If the generalization does not match what they have found, then it must be revised so it matches what the student has found.

What is great about generalizations is that it can be used among various social studies concepts and can be used to make predictions. This makes generalizations more exciting and interesting for the students.

Let us take a look at another example: "Text messaging encourages a sense of communication but also encourages isolation, because we do not need other people to be physically present while we communicate with them." From this statement, students can make predictions such as teenagers, who text more than older people, may have less desire to meet with their friends. since technology encourages communication more than face to face interaction does. In order to see if their predictions are true, they can interview teenagers of different ages to see how many of them text and how many of them prefer face to face interactions. Obviously this type of generalization may work better with middle school students, but could be used for elementary students as well.

Other than teaching students generalizations, students should be  encouraged to write their own. Students can be given certain concepts such as "George Washington" and "Colonists" and be encouraged to write their own generalizations tying the  concepts together. This encourages creative thought and individual understanding. From their own generalization statement, students would get more out of it too!

By reading the text chapter entitled "How are Social Studies Concepts and Generalizations developed?" it helped give me a better understanding of what generalizations are and how they are important.

 (Sunal, Haas 2011)

This video explains why generalizations are important and how they can be used inside of an elementary classroom. The concept learned is "spelling" and the generalization is plurals and how it helps students with their reading and writing skills.