Preconception | Meaning & Concept [Explained]

We explain what a preconception is and how it intervenes in education. In addition, we explain how it differs from prejudice.

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What is a preconception?

A preconcept is a preconceived idea, that is, a prior notion one has of something before being able to experience it directly . It is a word commonly used in the social sciences, made up of the Latin prefix pre- (“antelation”) and the Latin voice concipere (“conceive”), where it comes from conceptus (“concept”). Therefore, a preconcept is something that is thought or reasoned about in advance, and in that sense it is similar (but not equivalent) to the notion of prejudice.

Anything we think or accept about the world before it can be experienced (directly or proven through some research method) is fundamentally a preconception. In fact, in the study of pedagogy, this word is used to refer to the basic and intuitive aspects that the child forms from reality, and which are the starting point for teaching true concepts .

For example, a child may understand that two identical glasses with the same volume of water contain the same amount, but if we pour the contents of one into a narrower and taller glass, the child may think that it magically contains more water. This is precisely due to a preconceived idea about the capacity of things, which in this case leads to erroneous conclusions. The mission of the modern educational system, then, is to replace preconceptions with verifiable and demonstrable concepts.

However, We all have many preconceptions to some extent. : ideas that we form about some reality and that for some reason or another we have not been able to subject to critical judgment, or to the verification of direct experience. Thus, for example, many people rely on cultural prejudices, commonplaces and mistaken preconceptions when dealing with people from other cultures or geographies, and often discover for themselves that what they took for granted was nothing more than a preconceived idea.

Differences between preconception and prejudice

Although both a preconception and a prejudice constitute preconceived ideas, The term “preconception” is generally reserved for scientific matters. argumentative or linked to knowledge and knowledge, rather than to subjective positions regarding other people, which is typical of prejudices.

If a preconcept is a kind of “previous concept,” then a prejudice will be precisely, a “previous judgment”: a conclusion or reasoning reached about another person, without giving them the opportunity to demonstrate who they are and what they are like .

For example, a person who, without having ever been to Japan, thinks that the Japanese are very organized people and good at mathematics, is incurring a prejudice. On the other hand, a person who thinks that Japan is a geographically larger country than it really turns out to be is incurring a preconception, since they are not making a subjective judgment or assessment regarding anyone.