Guiding Principles of Concept Development

By: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com
​Updated May 30, 2024

Students who are blind or visually impaired need specialized instruction in order to understand concepts in a highly visual world. This unique programming includes teaching through concrete and unifying experiences and learning by doing. As stated on the Impact on Development & Learning page, Lowenfeld, a leader in the field of visual impairments, identified three strategies to use when working with students who are blind or visually impaired. The three strategies are concrete experiences, learning by doing, and unifying experiences.

Concrete Experiences

Concrete experiences are essential for students, especially those who are blind or visually impaired. Concrete experiences allow students to understand and engage with the world around them. These experiences involve direct interaction with real objects, allowing students to use all their senses to explore, understand, and make connections.
 
Tactile exploration is particularly crucial. By touching, feeling, smelling, and hearing real objects, students can build an understanding of their characteristics, properties, and functions. For example, feeling the texture of a pine tree, smelling its scent, or listening to the sounds of birds chirping in the tree can provide valuable sensory input that enhances learning.
 
It's important to recognize that not all students may have had the opportunity to interact with certain objects or environments due to their individual experiences and backgrounds. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a wide range of concrete experiences. This will expose students to diverse objects, concepts, and environments.
 
When introducing concepts or objects students may not have encountered before, use hands-on activities, field trips, or real-life examples to facilitate meaningful learning experiences. Be sure to encourage students to ask questions, explore freely, and express their observations and insights during these activities.
 
By prioritizing concrete experiences and ensuring access to real objects, you can support the development of students' sensory and cognitive skills, promote active engagement in learning, and foster a deeper understanding of the world around them.
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Learn by Doing

Encouraging independence and fostering a sense of responsibility is important for students with visual impairments to navigate their daily lives effectively. Here are some strategies to promote independence and minimize learned helplessness:
 
  • Direct Involvement: Involve students in all aspects of their daily routines, including locating materials, preparing food, completing chores, and other tasks. This hands-on participation helps students understand their environment and promotes independence.
  • Avoiding "The Good Fairy Syndrome": Resist the temptation to do tasks for students out of kindness or convenience, as this can inadvertently reinforce learned helplessness. Instead, encourage students to actively participate in tasks and take ownership of their actions.
  • Developing Responsibility: Assign students age-appropriate responsibilities and encourage them to do as much as possible for themselves. This may include obtaining materials, managing belongings, and completing tasks independently.
  • Teaching Comprehensive Processes: When teaching multi-step processes, ensure that students participate in all steps from start to finish. This helps them understand the entire process and avoid dependence on others for completion.
  • Gradual Assistance and Fading: If a student struggles to complete tasks independently, provide assistance as needed but gradually fade support over time. This allows students to build confidence and develop skills at their own pace.
  • Problem-Solving Skills: Encourage students to problem-solve by presenting alternative solutions and reinforcing their efforts when they come up with solutions independently. This empowers students to overcome challenges and develop critical thinking skills.
  • Promoting Self-Sufficiency: Never do anything for the student that they can do for themselves. Encourage independence by allowing students to take responsibility for their actions and decisions, even if it means facing challenges along the way.
 
By promoting independence, responsibility, and problem-solving skills, you can empower students with visual impairments to navigate their daily lives with confidence and self-sufficiency, ultimately helping each student reach their fullest potential.

Unifying Experiences

Creating thematic units can be an effective way to help students with visual impairments make meaningful connections between different topics and concepts. Here are some key considerations and strategies for implementing thematic units:
 
  • Expanding Vocabulary and Concepts: Thematic units provide opportunities to expand vocabulary, concepts, and skills beyond what students may encounter in their daily routines or in isolated lessons. By integrating related topics into cohesive units, students can deepen their understanding and make connections between different areas of learning.
  • Deliberate Lesson Planning: Deliberate, relevant, and purposeful lesson planning is essential for all students, especially those with visual impairments. Teachers should intentionally incorporate concept development into their lesson plans and ensure that concepts are directly taught rather than assumed to be learned independently or through passive listening.
  • Providing Direct Instruction: Most concepts need to be directly taught to students with visual impairments, rather than relying on incidental learning. Teachers should watch for situations where students may have had no prior experience and provide explicit instruction on these topics, using a variety of teaching methods to accommodate different learning styles.
  • Challenging Each Student: It's important to ensure that each student is appropriately challenged within the thematic unit. Teachers should facilitate and guide learning to provide a supportive "scaffold" that enables each student to progress to the next level of independent functioning. This may involve incorporating task analysis, backward chaining, modeling, demonstration, routines, and reinforcement into learning activities.
  • Accommodating Differences in Ability and Interest: Thematic units should be designed to accommodate differences in students' abilities and interests. Teachers can use charts or visual aids to track each student's progress and individualized goals, using a coded system to maintain student privacy while still providing targeted support.
 
Through the use of thematic units and by incorporating these strategies, you can create engaging and inclusive learning experiences for students with visual impairments, fostering deeper understanding and connections across various topics and concepts

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