Development and Use of Concept Context Maps to Promote Student (original) (raw)

Using concept maps as a research tool in science education research

… on the First International Conference on Concept …, 2004

Concept maps were initially developed as a data analysis tool in Novak's research program. In his twelve-year longitudinal study Novak and his research group constructed concept maps to represent changes in children's understanding of science concepts. Since their development, concept maps have been widely used for many purposes and in many different contexts. Concept maps are most well known as metacognitive tools that facilitate student meaningful learning. In our own research programs, we continue to use concept maps in the context for which they were developed-as a research tool to analyze data. This paper describes our use of concept maps in four research studies. In the first, concept maps were used as a tool for analyzing interview data of students' understanding of ecological processes over a six-year period. In the second, concept maps are being used to compare individual students' understandings of the transformation of matter with students' shared understandings. In the third study, concept maps were used as a research tool by a team of research scientists. They were found to help some members of the team to identify research questions that guided their individual research project. The fourth study, is using concept maps to investigate the development of students' conceptual understanding of science in environmental problem solving-based courses at colleges and universities across the U.S.

Using Computer-generated Concept Maps in the Engineering Design Process to Improve Physics Learning

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings

is a third year PhD student focusing on mathematics education within the Curriculum and Instruction PhD track in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture within the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. His current focus is on informal STEM education. Within this, he has taught for the past two years at ASSC, the Aggie STEM Summer Camp. He has over 16 presentations and publications and is constantly working on more. He has taught integrated math and science, elementary math methods, and problem solving in math at Texas A&M University. He is currently serving on several review boards and is Assistant Editor for the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education.

Concept Maps: An Essential Tool for Teaching and Learning to Learn Science

2006

This article is meant to offer math teachers a possibility to initiate their own study of concept maps, a powerful heuristic tool designed by Joseph Novak, on the ground that this tool can effectively help university students to face many difficulties for learning science and achieving a meaningful learning. This paper reflects the outcome of a research project undertaken at Universidad Nacional Experimental del Tachira (UNET), Venezuela, investigating different ways teacher and students may use concept mapping in physics. This paper hopes to engage educators on a discussion of this important issue and will focus on answering the following questions: What are Concept Maps? How are they constructed? What is the theory that supports Concept Maps? What are they used for? How can they be used with large groups of university students to facilitate the teaching-learning process? According to our experience, there are some possibilities to use Concept Maps in physics courses. Although we h...

Engineering in an Elementary Setting: An Analysis of Context Maps

Abstract: With the recent push for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in the pre-college setting, engineering design is emerging as a critical curricular component. Pre-college engineering instruction, including engineering design, can influence students' interest in STEM and ultimately career choices towards STEM fields. In this study, students in grades two to five completed context maps after participating in a pre-college engineering intervention.

Concept Maps as a Tool for Engineering Education

Concept map application in engineering education is described. An effective role of concept mapping in the overall knowledge domain ontology is stressed. It is shown that the concept maps are a suitable tool to support teachers in promoting students' comprehension of learning material contents and improving their understanding of new concepts. Development of concept maps helps students to see what they have acquired from the classes, supports them in making connections between new and prior concepts, and reinforces knowledge integration by providing students with an activity that promotes such integration. Concept maps are regarded as a valuable tool of assessment procedures, as they provide an explicit and overt representation of learners' knowledge, informative, tutoring and reflective feedbacks tailored to learners' individual characteristics and needs.

Concept mapping: A useful tool for science education

Journal of research in science teaching, 1990

This article describes the genesis and development of concept mapping as a useful tool for science education. It also offers an overview of the contents of this special issue and comments on the current state of knowledge representation. Suggestions for further research are made throughout the article.