Planning
A downside of site appointments is that they take an incredible amount of planning. The tutor must figure out transportation issues, educators' help, food and different plans n the function of inclement weather. The professor has to ensure that a agreed upon permission form, which you have crisis contact and information available on each university student (including allergies) and that all fees are paid in advance.
Research carried out by Exeter University has found out that nature-based institution vacations have a lasting effect on us once we grow up. On this study, teachers reported that students had acquired their future job choices inspired by the vacations, with one in ten students stating school trips have been a key element in their selection of future studies and profession.
Community heart is also developed from university trips. Students figure out how to value aspect.
"We discovered that high quality out of class learning also inspired how children respond and the approach to life selections they make. It shows the potential for school trips not only change children's lives, but the lives of the complete communities. "
The trips also encourage group recognition and self-discipline.
The Government thinks that each young person should go through the world beyond the classroom as an important part of learning and personal development, whatever how old they are, potential or circumstances. The Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) manifesto was launched in November 2006. Its goal is to encourage more popular use of the huge selection of educational opportunities that lie outside the normal class room. The manifesto also seeks to inspire academic institutions and the organisations that support learning outside the class to provide high-quality experience for all young people up to age 19.
The use of educational field vacations has long been a major part of the education encoding for both children and adults. However, anticipated to funding limits, time constraints, and increased responsibility concerns many education professionals balk at requests for field trips. Regardless of these concerns, well-planned field vacations can be a valuable tool in the extension providers educational toolbox.
An educational field trip is definitely an integral area of the instructional program. Good field travels provide members with first palm experience related to this issue or principle being discussed in this program. They offer unique opportunities for learning that are not available within the four walls of a class room.
As with any kind of educational program part, field trips should be designed around specific educational aims. A field trip should be designed so participants may easily make connections between your target of the field trip and the principles they may be learning in all of those other educational program. Numerous clinical tests in research education have recorded significant increases in participant factual knowledge and conceptual understanding after participation in well-planned field excursions.
Experiential Learning
Aristotle once said, "For the items we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. " Experiential learning is the procedure of making meaning from immediate experience.
Experiential learning requires no tutor and relates only to this is making procedure for the individual's direct experience. However, although gaining of knowledge is an inherent process that occurs naturally, for a genuine learning experience that occurs, there must exist certain elements. Matching to David Kolb, an American educational theorist, knowledge is continually gained through both personal and environmental experiences. He says that to be able to get genuine knowledge from an experience, certain skills are required:
the learner must be ready to be positively mixed up in experience;
the learner must be able to reflect on the experience;
the learner must have and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience; and
the learner must own decision making and problem dealing with skills to be able to make use of the new ideas gained from the knowledge.
Experiential learning can be considered a impressive educational method. It engages the learner at a more personal level by dealing with the needs and wishes of the average person. Experiential learning requires characteristics such as self-initiative and self-evaluation. For experiential understanding how to be truly effective, it should employ the whole learning steering wheel, from goal setting techniques, to experimenting and watching, to reviewing, and lastly action planning. This complete process allows one to learn new skills, new behaviour or even totally new means of thinking.
Most teachers understand the important role experience takes on in the learning process. A great learning environment, with a great deal of laughter and esteem for the learner's expertise, also fosters a powerful experiential learning environment. It is vital that the average person is encouraged to directly entail themselves in the knowledge, so that they gain a better knowledge of the new knowledge and wthhold the information for a longer time. As stated by the traditional Chinese language philosopher, Confucius, "tell me and I will neglect, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand. "
An effective experiential facilitator is one who is passionate about his or her work and can immerse members totally in the learning situation, allowing them to gain new knowledge using their peers and the environment created. These facilitators energize the creativity, keeping participants hooked on the knowledge.
Student recruitment, retention and completion rates are a significant concern of all college faculty. Seibert, Hart and Sypher (1989) and Baker, et. al. (1991) doc the benefits of experiential learning for university student profession decision making and for development.
Disciplines in the professional and complex disciplines including education and the health careers and communal work are using experiential learning instructional ways to provide students with the competencies necessary to pursue successful opportunities after graduation (Baxter Magolda 1993; Hightower 1993).
Field excursions and Learning
In modern times, more has been found out about how we're able to store and retrieve information-in other words, our memory systems. Teachers commonly use field vacations as a way to solidify learning. New research and understanding of how the human brain processes information facilitates this practice and provides a knowledge of why field trips are so important to learning.
Our most powerful kind of storage area in conditions of capacity is episodic memory. A couple of "episodes" inside our lives that we can recall clearly no matter how long ago they could have occurred. If we focus on an show from our former, we can get started to recall increasingly more details about it predicated on what we have identified to be the important issues. We are able to also recall and even go through the same emotions that people experienced at the time of the episode. In fact, emotions can trigger the memory of the show. This is an incredibly powerful kind of storage area, and skillful educators make the best use from it.
Field vacations are a critical tool for creating episodic recollection. Episodic memory is created through sights, noises, smells, tastes, touch, location, and emotions. Field trips coupled with arts activities before, during, and following the experience permit students to build powerful memories that they can recall the rest of their lives. The arts help to provide mental content for the episode and establish psychological causes that enhance safe-keeping and recall of memory from the knowledge. This approach has both explicit and implicit storage area pathways, thus increasing the probability of retrieval.
Field trips
Field excursions in the formative years are one of the main things teachers can provide for their students. As everybody knows, children learn by doing. They bear in mind what they have personally experienced. In addition, theory development is optimized through lively, explorative encounters. Field travels are a type of experiential learning that gets children away from the traditional classroom environment and into a fresh mode of learning. They can be as simple as going for a course of children out on the institution grounds for a lessons in observation, or as detailed as an out-of-state trip to a particular field site. Field vacations not only develop children's learning and activities by giving them with hands-on activities, they also increase children's knowledge and knowledge of the world where they live.
Current research (Kisiel, 2006, Martin & Seevers, 2003; DeMarie, 2001 ; Knapp, 2002) shows that field excursions are essential for many reasons. Field excursions provide real experiences related to all content areas. For instance, a trip to a bird sanctuary brings all the sights, does sound, and nesting practices of these pets or animals alive for children. Field travels prolong learning by widening a child's world and provide a platform for learning.
Field outings enrich and broaden the curriculum.
Children begin to believe outside the field, as well as learning beyond the classroom. For instance, third grade children are required to study and find out about state government. A field trip to City Hall or the judge house gives children an initial hand look at who runs the government.
Field trips enhance observation skills by immersing children into sensory activities.
For example, a vacation to the aquarium brings the sharks up close and personal for children to observe pearly whites, fins, and sight. This is really something that children will not find in a textbook.
Field trips increase children's knowledge in a particular subject matter area.
A visit to a natural history museum is much more exciting and helpful than enjoying a video recording or reading a textbook (Semlak & Beck, 1999).
Field trips expand children's awareness of their own community.
When children have a field visit to visit the local fireplace or police force departments, they get started to understand, in a very concrete way, the worthiness of the important community resources. Field excursions concentrating on a "beach-sweep, " or "street-sweep, " allow children to take part in activities in which they become community advocates. Field travels provide living laboratories where children acquire knowledge outside the realm of the standard classroom.
Benefits
School field travels are a perfect supplement to lessons in the classroom. They give students the possibility to have first-hand activities and to explore the world. A field trip is particularly effective if it supplements lessons already learned in the school room. Students develop a deeper understanding and gratitude of a topic when a field trip shows them their school room lessons in action. They'll also become more likely to wthhold the information they learn, and they will have fun while experiencing new things.
Community
While most field outings are designed to help children learn school subjects, they can also teach children important life lessons about compassion and providing back again to the community. For instance, taking young students to an area nursing home to hand out cards and sing during the holidays is a straightforward, but heartfelt, gesture that the residents will appreciate. For aged students, a field visit to a county jail can help win over the importance of respecting regulations. Field travels can help teachers teach their students various lessons, and they can inspire kids to learn and expand as individuals.
Teaching Home Economics- Mary Moon
The supervision of activities outside school
Outside activities include sessions, field outings and vacations both in country and in another country.
Most schools come with an decided pupil to staff ratio for such activities. Prior to leaving the institution premises pupils need careful instruction on the task to be implemented and the time to be apportioned to each activity. The professor supervises the crossing of streets with everyone observing the usual pedestrian strategies. On public carry the display of socially appropriate behaviour by pupils is the responsibility of their teacher(s) towards fellow vacationers, the conductor and the driver. If a teacher feels unable to control pupils competently it is wiser to avoid escorting them outside school.
"Education should enable the given individual to formulate his own beliefs on life and permit him to enter society by the end of his schooldays on the highway leading to fulfilment. "
Trips in the community can provide abundant sources of instruction in many stages of home economics. Field journeys are known by a variety of names such as instructional travels, study trips, institution trips, institution journeys, and school excursions. Many of these refer to an educational procedure where students got to observe workers in their occupational environment.
The most evident benefit of registered trips is the eye they maintain for the students. Opportunities to break from classroom exercises and tensions are always welcome. Students are encouraged to learn as they have got opportunities to examine materials and acquire new ideas. Field excursions can be used to arouse curiosity about a new product of study, to market interest throughout a unit, to examine what has been protected.
Field trips provide students with information that may not be accessible as effectively in virtually any other way. First-hand activities with materials in their natural settings may raise the validity of the students' understandings of a subject. Knowledge can be clarified and applied to concrete, real-life activities. Furthermore, various content of the school curriculum can be integrated into a meaningful whole entire.
Field journeys can help students to expand toward lots of the aims of home economics. For instance, students can form their forces of observation; learn where you can go for facts or even to seek assistance with family problems, enhance their attitudes, observe how people live, develop appreciations, become considering profitable uses of these free time, develop initiative, and receive background to enrich their study of a topic.
In addition to the many ways that field outings can enrich the educational experience of the students, they have got public relations value also. The blending of assignment work with genuine life not only enriches the students' knowledge of the school. Along the way of planning with the professor and students to make their visit worthwhile, the community hosts learn about the goals and scope of the home economics program.
Meshke studied the utilization of community resources in the ninth and tenth grade home economics classes. The ninth class classes were learning "Food Selection and buy" and the tenth level classes were learning "Selection and Good care of Electrical Equipment. " Experimental classes frequented food stores and stores where they could check out electronic equipment. Other classes, known as the "classroom" categories, used as many associates with stores as you possibly can in their class room experiences-descriptive and pictorial materials, and publication advertisements. "Control" communities received no information or special help; the professors taught the devices anyhow they desired. Students who possessed actual store experience confirmed superior achievement on written lab tests. The findings advised also that the students with store contacts were more self-reliant, more likely to exercise judgement in reaching problem situation, and more likely to apply at home what they had learned.
However, there are certain constraints or possible troubles that could cause administrator reluctance or tutor inertia toward the inclusion of field journeys. A field trip can be justified only to the extent that it plays a part in the objectives of the course. The trip is no result in itself; it may not be educational experience unless it is carefully planned and utilized. Considerable time is required to make the strategies that are essential for an efficient experience. When more than one class period is necessary, a vacation may be difficult to match into the college schedule.
In deciding the usefulness of a given experience, a instructor and her students need to believe in terms of the requirements by which to choose a field trip.
Toward Better Coaching of Home Economics
Field travels are among the most valuable teaching assists. Relating to Dale, study outings have several main purposes: for students to learn in the field, in which a major part of their learning will need place after senior high school and university; for learner to see associations between classroom and external world experiences; as well as for students to observe the everyday world functioning, with an effective exploratory experience, to include richness and interpretation to concepts, also to develop the abilities of observation by becoming more selective in witnessing. Lastly, field trips can provide a means for better school-community relations, specifically a heightened curiosity about the institution curriculum. (Edgar Dale, Audiovisual Methods in Coaching. NY: The Dryden Press, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 297-307)
Field Trips will need to have a definite regards to school activities.
Site visits and the NMC
Principle 3:
Stimulation of Analytical, Critical and Creative Thinking Skills
Students learn by requesting questions and by establishing connections. Learning can be an active process regarding an ongoing search. Students study from their everyday experience through observation, being attentive, exploration, experimentation and the evaluation of what has been uncovered with what is already known.
Learning is an organic procedure for technology and mental restructuring and not a mechanical procedure for gathering information. Those who are learning are in an activity throughout that they are constantly changing and refining their present modes of knowing. Students need to improve their settings of knowing within an active manner. Teachers or learning systems must help this process. A wholesome education therefore motivates:
- a pedagogy based on questioning rather than a pedagogy based on answers; questions that lead to help expand questions rather than answers;
- learning by doing, that involves the creation by students of concrete and relevant
objects, a process that involves looking at the problem.
The curriculum stimulates an activity of continuous search. Teachers should help students not and then establish the hyperlink between people, things, incidents, functions and ideas, but to constantly change or sophisticated their structure of knowledge.
Students aren't empty receptacles to be filled. Students are a flame to be arranged alight. The educational process is not a production lines. Convenience, technocratic efficiency and mass production aren't characteristics compatible with an educational process that places students at the centre of the curriculum. The Country wide Minimum amount Curriculum recognises the interests, knowledge and scholar experiences, and displays the knowing that students are capable of changing and personalising new knowledge. In other words, the National Minimum Curriculum respect students much less passive recipients of static content but as critical and creative thinkers and suppliers of knowledge.
Principle 4:
Education Relevant for Life
Students consider the learning process to be relevant when they set up a link between school work and their personal encounters. When this relevance is not clear, teachers must establish the bond between what's being taught and its software and relevance for everyday activity. Students develop a love of learning when they appreciate that learning, in conditions of both content and method, helps them throughout their life.
In this framework, the educational process must extend beyond the confines of the school.
Historical monuments, museums, long term and temporary exhibitions, the work area, companies, and the natural area offer an important educational framework and should be an integral feature of the teachers' design of work.
Outdoor education
Usually it refers to structured learning that occurs in the outdoors. Outdoor education attracts upon the philosophy, theory and routines of experiential learning and environmental education.
"Education beyond your classroom" describes school curriculum learning, other than with a class of students relaxing in an area with a instructor and literature. It encompasses biology field trips as well as indoor activities like observing a textile company.
Philosophy and theory about outdoor education tends to emphasise the effect of natural environments on human beings, the educative role of stress and challenge, and experiential learning.
John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) was a strong advocate of sensory learning who believed that the child should go through the actual subject of study before reading about it. He thought the use of the sense - finding, reading, tasting, and touching - were the strategies by which children were to come in contact with the natural world. In preparation for the later research of natural sciences, children should first gain acquaintance with objects such as normal water, earth, fire, rainwater, plants, and rocks.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) carried out the ideas of Comenius by educating the young man, Emile, relating to principles found in aspect. He believed that physical activity was very important in the education of a kid. They may be curious, he said, and this interest should be utilized to the fullest. Rousseau preached that education should become more sensory and rational; less literary and linguistic. Rather than learning indirectly from literature, children should learn through direct experience. He proclaimed, Our first educators are our foot, our hands and our eye. To substitute books for each one of these. . . is but to instruct us to work with the reasons of others.
Johann Henrick Pestalozzi (1746-1827) emphasized the utilization of immediate, firsthand activities and real objects, also. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, he educated functional skills such as farming, housekeeping, spinning and weaving. The school backyard was used for lessons in mother nature review and geography. His mythology was based on the fact that the learner would use these start experiences at a later time to formulate concepts and generalizations by himself. Pestalozzi, a follower of Rousseau, urged instructors to consider their pupils out of the classroom:
Lead your child out into aspect, educate him on the hilltops and in the valleys. There he will listen better, and the sense of liberty will given him more durability to overcome problems. However in these hours of freedom let him be taught by nature somewhat than by you. Let him completely realize that jane is the real educator and that you, with your art work, do only walk quietly at her side.
Educational visits help young people to understand themselves, make decisions that play to their strengths and therefore seek out options that will best suit their successful development.
It is now increasingly possible to really have the value and learning of educational trips accredited through both universities and the Youth Service.
The Council actively facilitates this activity by giving an guarantee that educational outings are encouraged for any its students and supervised to ensure quality and safe practices. There are many different methods to how this is achieved for example:
ensuring that everyone who needs it gets the relevant information.
providing staff who conduct sessions (party market leaders) and the ones who have to approve them, Educational Appointments Coordinators (EVCs) with assistance to help ensure they are confident to make the essential judgements and decisions that their jobs require.
ensuring additional information, often generated from incident investigations and from invention, is circulated to EVCs for passing onto their co-workers.
thorough training made available to staff to be EVCs, party leaders, adventure activity market leaders, first aiders and by means of tailored programmes to address any local need.
providing feedback from monitoring appointments to school governors, head educators, managers, party market leaders and to other people who has an authentic interest. Monitoring is through confirming party leaders strategies prior to implementation, observing and tests agreements for approving, discovering activities taking place in the field sent by the Council's staff or with a contracted service provider.
maintaining a support and advice facility via phone or email.
twice yearly reports sheets.
The Council's duties are provided by the Outdoor Education Adviser (OEA) whose role is supported by the Outdoor Education Advisers -panel, that works directly with the Division for Education (DfE). For further information on the task please contact the Outdoor Education Adviser. When you have a query in regards to a specific trip please contact the organiser in the first instance.
A lot of information can be found out about providers and the conditions they meet through their own websites or those of the professional relationship to that they subscribe. Providers who are legally required to be inspected and hold a licence can be confirmed on the experience Activities Licensing Specialist website.
For more info about educational goes to please see our educational appointments frequently asked questions page.
Disruptive Pupils: Addition or Exclusion?
School trips should be accessible to all; but the good do and self-control of the pupils is essential to the success of any trip, especially those where there is already an element of inherent risk. Stringent codes of behaviour and discipline are not there to spoil anyone's enjoyment; they are essential to maintain maximum health and safe practices and to ensure that everyone has a great time without injury.
The National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Educators (NASUWT) advises its members to consider excluding disruptive pupils - those who continuously exhibit anti-social behavior and which places others in danger - from heading on a college trip. The NUT feels that although institution journeys present pupils with opportunities to demonstrate personal features of effort, self-reliance and co-operation with others, the taking of children out of college is an "onerous responsibility" for instructors.
Meticulous planning and planning are deemed necessary and maximum safety is the target. The Association of Instructors and Lecturers (ATL) advises its users to get union advice before agreeing for taking with them a pupil or college student whose behaviour record (or medical record) provides them real cause for concern. ATL claim that it might be appropriate to attain an arrangement with the pupil's parents about what action will be taken in case of misbehaviour.
The Secondary Head's Connection (SHA) has an alternative advice: To break up the school party into smaller, workable models with good levels of supervision from experienced and skilled staff; and also a full programme of activities to keep the pupils busy and boredom-free. This will allow effective control and self-control to be carried out. Leaders have to be alert to all possible problems - including those induced by disruptive behavior. If expected, such problems can be averted. The Professional Connection of Teachers (PAT) includes the self-control of the children as one factor to be considered when working out supervision ratios.
"Managing Risk Assessment " PM 008 of the "Professional Management Series" produced by the National Relationship of Head Educators (NAHT) clearly identifies poor guidance as an Organisational Threat; the individual not being suitable for a task or the unsafe behavior of an individual as a person Threat; and the areas of discipline, good care and control as Procedural or Insurance policy Hazards.
Individual college trip organisers must make their own decisions upon this issue in accordance with school insurance policy and after seeking appropriate advice. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that if the pupils themselves get excited about the planning and organisation of their trip or visit right from the start; and if indeed they decide the rules and codes of behaviour and self-control for themselves; they might be less inclined to misbehave.
No child should be allowed on a school trip with out a signed parental consent form.
Outdoor learning is good for children and young people. It helps them gain a functional understanding of the globe around them, build self-confidence, test their skills, take sensible dangers, and create a sense of responsibility and tolerance to places and people. The body of research exhibiting the considerable health insurance and well-being benefits of hanging out in natural inexperienced spaces is growing. In addition, outdoor learning can help children and young people understand topics, like maths or knowledge, through real life examples and first palm experience. While academics accomplishment is important, outdoor education can play a substantial role helping pupils develop soft skills like good communication, team work and management that are crucial to a proper rounded education vital for life beyond the class.
Despite useful notions of quest and expedition, the ways in which time (and its own natures) is experienced in 'brief' and 'long' excursions is rarely evaluated for the potentially wealthy ways it styles the 'experience' of the outside, wilderness or character. The possibility of a sense of place, immersion in nature's areas, or some 'connection' to it/them is, immediately affected. The (probable) 'electric power of the proximal, ' or spatiality and geographies of movement in the outside are, we imagine, undermined by the lack of the factor and examination of time--knowingly or unknowingly. The challenge with which we are concerned, then, as professionals and theorists is the persistence of the traditional dominant reasoning of modern outdoor education. Our reflexive work here is to donate to those important conversations about the likelihood of place pedagogies. Part of this contribution is to adopt a critical stance to how that dominant, modern cultural logic is inserted in a range of sources and, therefore, traditions in outdoor education. But those customs are, significantly, ensnared in the 'fast. ' Hence, our 'post-traditional' case-study offering here of any slow pedagogy we've practiced over the past three years--where, pursuing Feline Steven's lyrics, our journey has been creeping, groping, finding and, quite simply, taking time for you to pause, explore, discover what a poor pedagogy is, and could offer those emerging conversations of place. Here, in outlining a case study we only present theory, school of thought and critique in a minimalist manner, where necessary
Our witnesses were specifically concerned about the access that pupils from low income family members have to school trips and visits; for these children university provision may be the only opportunity they need to experience different conditions from their immediate locality. Andy Simpson commented:
. . . in order to have the sort of informed and employed citizens we would all like to emerge from the institution system, it isn't unreasonable to identify a variety of experiences-some ethnical, some environmental, some adventurous-that go towards making that curved and engaged resident. Certainly, the role of the family
in providing those opportunities is the first dock of call and is also pivotal, but as a culture we must ask ourselves: are these exact things important enough that we leave them to a random chance that if the family does not provide them, the classes may or might not provide them?
Learning beyond your classroom supports pupils' learning and development. It has the potential to enrich and enliven coaching across all topics. Teachers need to be exposed to learning outside the curriculum from in early stages in their profession, and this should not be still left to chance. We expect to visit a clearer and more consistent existence for
learning beyond your classroom across original teacher training and early job and ongoing professional development for teachers.
Field labs are prolonged (several hour), structured, outdoors, scientific investigations targeted at observing, collecting and recording data. Field labs are related to, but different from, other interactive investigations carried out in the field, such as learner and student-faculty field research, field trips, field lectures, etc
'Experience' is without a doubt at the pedagogical heart and soul of curriculum areas like outdoor, physical, environmental and health education. The importance of learning through 'hands on' experience is also within the knowledge laboratories at academic institutions, constructivist pedagogies in mathematics and technology, the studio for artistic creations, field journeys for social educators and in the competencies produced by vocational teachers. Experiential educators delight in the traditional Confucian stating, 'Tell me, and I am going to neglect. Show me, and I might bear in mind. Involve me, and I'll understand'. But, evenly, that joy requires tempering when further thought is directed at the meanings of postmodern experience and exactly how it/they are enacted in experiential education.
So far we have viewed the impacts of fieldwork and at what constitutes effective practice. It is the case, though, that there is substantial variant between students and colleges in terms of opportunities to experience the outdoors and in the subsequent learning that takes place. So what will be the factors that influence how much learning occurs outdoors and the total amount and quality of provision of experience for students? Distinctive barriers include:
fear and matter about health and safety;
teachers' insufficient confidence in coaching outdoors;
school curriculum requirements;
shortages of your time, resources and support;
wider changes within and beyond the training sector.
Fears and phobias
Several studies claim that outdoor settings could possibly be the source of genuine dread and matter for teenagers. Simmons (1994a, b) found children in Chicago indicated concerns about a variety of mother nature scenes: possible natural risks; threats from other people; and inconveniences for his or her physical comfort. Similar worries about getting lost and encountering snakes or poisonous vegetation are
reported by others (Bixler et al. , 1994; Wals, 1994).
The important point is the fact such doubts 'pose barriers to enjoying and learning [in and] about wildlands' (Bixler et al. , 1994: 31). This happening sometimes appears in students with a higher 'disgust awareness' who are found to choose activities that not involve handling of organic subject, and fieldwork sites with pure water, no algae and easy lakeshore gain access to (Bixler and Floyd, 1999).
Atyeo (1939) conducted a report in which he likened the results extracted from the use of any excursion approach with those of other coaching methods. He found that with a rise in excursions there was a rise in investigating the phenomena associated with the experience, and showed that the excursion approach was superior to class discourse for teaching material requiring comparisons and understanding of concrete things.
