Roth, W.-M. (1992/3). Concept mapping in primary science. Prime Areas, 35(3), 35-39.
The British Columbia YEAR 2000 framework has included into its mission statement important research findings of recent years [6]. Accordingly, learning is an active process during which children actively and purposefully engage with problematic issues. In this process, they make sense of new information in terms of what they already know. They then connect these new ideas to their prior knowledge. Children seem to have their own clocks when it comes to constructing and accommodating new knowledge, so that this process varies across individuals depending on their levels of maturity, interests, or prior experiences. But learning is not only an individual process. Rather, learning is fundamentally a social process, and much of what we learn is part of culturally shared and historically constructed knowledge. Learning seen from this perspective is a process of apprenticeship into the ways of a culture, whether it is that of just-plain-folks, historians, mathematicians, or scientists. In order to teach according to these principles of YEAR 2000, we need the appropriate tools which create the teaching-learning environments envisioned in the document. Over the past seven years I have intensively used and researched one such tool, collaborative concept mapping, in science classrooms ranging from primary to university levels.
To help children to organize concepts into a meaningful framework, Joseph Novak invented a learning heuristic [1]. He called this heuristic concept mapping. The heuristic of concept mapping was designed (1) to assist learners in understanding the meaning relationships between concepts; (2) to establish hierarchical relationships among the concepts; and (3) to develop a framework for what they already know into which they can integrate new ideas. In addition, I have arranged the concept mapping such that children work in groups ranging from two to four children. In this way, children are encouraged to talk about their own understandings of the meaning relationships expressed in concept maps. By building classroom cultures in which the principles of elaboration, explanation, and justification of ideas became accepted norms, children learn to reason about their own ideas. Through this process, children are introduced to talking science, an important process in becoming scientifically literate. Figure 1 and 2 present examples of concept maps. The first was prepared by a grade 1 student after one instructional lesson on concept mapping, the second by a group of fourth graders.
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Working on concept maps encourages children to explain information that they "know" by gut feeling, but which they don't really understand. Encouraging them to make their own ideas explicit and to describe these ideas in their own words, helps children realize that they have not yet constructed a complete understanding; they have to look again, consider the ideas in the context of the initial experiment, and try to connect the ideas to each other and to their prior knowledge. While designing concepts maps, children frequently realize that they do not know how two ideas are related, and this leads them to develop new questions to investigate.
Much of my introduction follows the instruction for introducing concept maps to first through third graders prepared by Novak and Gowin [1]. The lesson begins with two lists of words on the blackboard. The first list includes familiar object words, such as CAR, DOG, WINDOW, and HOUSE. The second list includes event words such as RAINING, RUNNING, SKIPPING, and WRITING. I ask the children what the words describe until they have identified the lists as describing objects and events. We then introduce the word CONCEPT as label for both object and event words.
In the next step, I prepare a new list of words which includes are, where, then, with, and the. Even without much prompting, children invariably notice a difference with the concept words. If children do not spontaneously introduce the notion of linking, I introduce the label "linking words" for this set of terms. They are used to link pairs of concepts to form simple but meaningful sentences. Together the children and I construct a few examples of sentences from the words in our list, such as "DOG is RUNNING," "CHILDREN are SKIPPING," "WATER is in the BEAKER," or "WATER is BOILING."
A fourth list of words includes proper nouns such as Vancouver, Big Bird, Batman, and Christmas. I help children arrive at the distinction between proper nouns, that is names of specific places, events, and objects on the one hand, and concepts as labels for regularities on the other.
In the next step, I ask children to construct more sentences. In this way, we show the meanings of these term. By constructing simple sentences with BICYCLE, e.g., we can show that some sentences which express knowledge are correct in that they are shared widely (BICYCLE is YELLOW), while others are incorrect (BICYCLE is FLYING).
At this stage, I let children work in groups of three or four because they are of great support to each other. First, we identify the main concepts from a piece of text. So that the children can underline or highlight these concepts, I type and print out the text using a large type face. Also, the first concept maps should not contain more than 6 to 12 concepts. Each group of children receives a sufficient amount of 2" x 3" slips of paper on which they write the concepts we identified (alternatively you can use post-it's which stay where the children put them so that they are not inadvertently blown away or moved). The children then rank these slips in order of importance which they see fit. It is important to provide children with the sense that concept maps can look quite differently depending on the people who construct them and which emphasis they want to give to the various ideas appearing in them.
I project an overhead transparency with a sample concept map on a different topic. Here I point out that the general ideas appear on top of the concept map, while the more specific ideas appear further down. I also encourage children to read sections of the projected map so that they experience how much can be presented in such a map. The children then proceed to fan out their concepts, while they talk about how pairs of concepts can be linked. When they are satisfied with their arrangements, children copy the arrangements to their notebooks.
My children use concept maps in several different contexts. First, they concept map what they know when they do hands-on activities. Before children begin their investigations, I have them list the concepts which they already know about the topic. After they have completed their investigation, the children add to their previous list all those which they newly learned. Then they prepare a concept map which includes both their previous concepts and the new ones. In this way, children experience for themselves how new concepts tie to those that they already had. As such, concept maps fit well into a program that makes use of the Learning Cycle, a teaching strategy during which children invent new concepts for which the teacher provided new labels. To help children integrate these new labels into that which they already know, concept mapping is an ideal experience.
Concept maps are also ideal to help children to understand textual materials. I sometimes ask children to read something at home. An incentive for integrating what children read to what they already know, I sometimes ask them to make a concept map on their own. To make sure that they have used all the terms they had previously identified, some children prefer to list all the concepts on the margin of their paper. In this way, they can cross off those concepts already used [Figure 1].
Concept maps are especially well suited to help children construct an overview of the science content which they learned over a period of time. By providing children with a list of concepts from all the experiments and/or chapters in the reference book, I make sure that they will map the key concepts. Through concept mapping, children are then enabled to tie together the various ideas spread throughout the chapters of a unit. While children usually perceive science content as a sequence of topics, this activity helps them to build an integrated framework.
Concept mapping also helps us teachers to organize our thoughts about teaching a unit. For example, concept maps have helped elementary teachers to develop science curricula which conform to learning principles similar to those in YEAR 2000 [5]. Figure 3 presents a concept map of the topics in a grade 2 program which some of my preservice students taught during their practicum and student teaching experiences. The concept map provides the overall framework. For each lesson, we drew a specific concept map which contained not only the more abstract concepts, but also details about individual experiments. We provide but one example of zoom in which the specifics of the lesson are indicated which includes all student activities. Ideally, the children should have the opportunity to conduct all these investigations on their own, so that the knowledge represented in the map has a solid foundation in the experiences of the children. The concept map aids us to plan the curricular unit, and helps us to assist children in integrating all the hands-on activities into a consistent and meaningful structure.
In our own work, we have been able to establish the usefulness of concept mapping in several respects [2, 3, 4]. First, concept mapping in groups helps to engage children in a discourse through which they make sense of their experiences, whether these were hands-on or reading experiences. Second, in order to talk about science concepts to their peers (and the teacher), children have to externalize their own meanings. In the process, they have to evaluate, integrate, and elaborate on their understanding in ways which leads to improve their own comprehension. Third, concept mapping allows children to integrate the various experiences in the elementary science classroom to an integrated, wholistic understanding of science. Finally, concept mapping as a collaborative activity allows us teachers to evaluate both the process and the products of children's comprehension activity: We can observe children as they try to make sense, and we have available the final products of their work to assess this understanding.
If you consistently use concept maps with your children, they will soon understand how and why concept maps are constructed. Figure 4 shows a concept map about concept mapping drawn by fifth-grade students. It clearly shows the connections which children make between concepts and events on the one hand, and the experiments on the other. The children also expressed the importance of hierarchy, the relationship between concepts and linking words, the relative freedom in constructing the map, and that the concept maps help in meaningful learning.
One can observe an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards science courses in general and towards concept mapping in specific. In their concept maps about science, the children express that science is fun. They like concept mapping because it shows them how things are connected, and because they can work together in groups. I feel that teaching and learning in the science class or laboratory should be a meaningful experience. Concept maps have become an important tool for both children and teachers to facilitate learning and to encourage integration. Children know how all the lessons and/or experiences are interconnected and they can make sense of an otherwise sequential curriculum. Teachers know how to put all the lessons together so that each one builds on the next in such a manner that children can construct meaning.
[1] Novak, J. D. & Gowin, D. B. (1984). Learning how to learn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
[2] Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1992). The social construction of scientific concepts or the concept map as conscription device and tool for social thinking in high school science. Science Education, 76, 531-557.
[3] Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1993). The concept map as a tool for the collaborative construction of knowledge: A microanalysis of high school physics students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 30, 503-534.
[4] Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1994). Science discourse through collaborative concept mapping: New perspectives for the teacher. International Journal of Science Education, 16, 437-455.
[5] Starr, M. L. & Krajcik, J. S. (1990). Concept maps as heuristics for science curriculum development: Toward improvement in process and product. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(10), 987-1000.
[6] YEAR 2000: A curriculum and assessment framework for the future (1989). Ministry of Education, British Columbia.
Figure 1. A concept map drawn after one instructional period by a first-grader
Figure 2. A group of fourth graders express what they learned after a lesson on the reflection and transmission of light
Figure 3. A concept map drawn by a teacher to organize all lessons for about one-half of the school year.
Figure 4. Two fifth-graders summarize their experience and knowledge about concept mapping. The units, each of which lasts from one to four periods, are indicated on the bottom of the map.
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