Campbell, Margaret
Carey, S. (2011). Précis of the origin of concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 113-167. doi:10.1017/S0140525X10000919
Carey, S. (2009). The origin of concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Summary
Carey writes that learning "requires adjusting expectations, representations, and actions to data" (p. 120) - basically hypothesis testing, but if a learner is not able to state a hypothesis to test, Carey proposes the use of "Quinian bootstrapping" as a learning process. The sections of the article explain in detail different ways that bootstrapping can be used to support learning. Model-building has been shown to be particularly effective for inspiring innovation, and in this article, Carey discusses how modeling unknown processes with variables known to a learner, no matter what domain they are from, can help learners to build understandings of material that are outside of their conceptual framework.
Evaluation
This article is dense and complicated, and I am sure the book is also; however, when I read slowly, underlined, and outlined the sections specifically about learners in a bootstrapping curriculum, I was able to get some solid instructional ideas for science and other subjects. Carey has many critics and these theories seem very fragile because they don't seem to be supported by large study data. But there are some unusual ideas in this article, and with the failure of so many instructional methods, especially in math and science, I am delighted when someone makes innovative recommendations.
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