CONCEPT MAPPING IN LEARNING BIOLOGY

Concept mapping is described repeatedly in the literature as a tool that can support and enhance students’ learning in science classrooms. Despite such endorsements, the use of concept mapping as a basis for classroom activities in UK secondary schools does not seem to be widespread. Some of the flaws in the supporting literature are highlighted. The two main barriers to the extensive adoption of concept mapping as an integral component of typical classroom strategies are seen as the epistemological beliefs of classroom teachers and the underlying philosophy of the curriculum that they are asked to deliver. In conclusion, concept mapping is seen as a tool that may support learning within an appropriate teaching ecology. Such an ecological perspective may require, for some, a re-conceptualization of the teacher’s role in which teaching, learning and change are seen as integrated components of effective teaching.

Concept mapping is an active learning tool with numerous uses in the biology classroom, including planning, teaching, revision and assessment (e.g. Edmondson 2000, Kinchin 2000a). The concept map has been described as ‘the most important meta-cognitive tool in science education today’ by Mintzes et al. (1997: 424). Despite numerous research reports indicating the classroom benefits of concept mapping, my own experience indicates to me that biology teachers are not exploiting the benefits of concept mapping within their classrooms (a view reiterated by Brown 1995). This suggests there is a problem with classroom concept mapping that has not been explicitly addressed by the literature. Comment has been made that the research literature demonstrates some reluctance to highlight any problems with concept mapping (Kinchin 2000a). The authors of many studies seem content to cite one or two positive papers that are assumed to provide sufficient evidence upon which to rest the basic assumption that concept mapping enhances learning in the sciences. In particular, the meta-analysis by Horton et al. (1993) is often used in this way. Whilst I have no quarrel with the general findings of those authors, I feel the need for caution in
generalizing too much from such a study. Whilst Horton et al. (1993) considered113 studies for inclusion in their review, only 18 met their designated criteria of: a) occurring in classrooms; b) comparing quantitatively measured outcomes for treatment classes with outcomes for control classes and c) including sufficient data to calculate an effect size. Of the 18 that satisfied these criteria, some were considered by those authors to be influenced by ‘novelty’ or ‘Hawthorne’ effects whilst others only considered maps produced by teachers. Of those remaining, only three were concerned with biology and subjected to peer review by publication in educational journals (Lehman et al. 1985, Heinze-Fry and Novak 1990, Schmid and Telaro 1990). These might be considered as the most significant studies from Horton’s meta-analysis in terms of supporting the use of concept mapping in the biology classroom.

In striving to conduct controlled, laboratory-style experiments, these authors have attempted to neutralize (or ignore) contextual factors which may have had most influence upon their results (Cobern 1993). Overall, these papers can be criticized for focusing on isolated elements of the total classroom milieu to the exclusion of other factors - precisely the criticism that those authors level at the general quality of science teaching and assessment which concentrates on isolated fragments of understanding, extracted from the context that provides meaning. Such a reductionist stance is incompatible with the holistic or ecological perspective that is recognized as a product of a concept mapping approach. read more download