Miha Lee From SED 625SC
Current Events #1
Concept mapping in problem based learning: a cautionary tale
by Alex H. Johnstone and Kevin H. Otis
From Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 2006, 7(2), 84~95
This article discusses the research about the interaction between the Concept Mapping
(CM) and the Problem Based Learning (PBL) as a learning method, and their main research
focus is on the validity of assessment using CM. The group of students observed in this
research is the medical students in the University of Glasgow, UK.
The followings are the hypotheses and the results.
(i) Students who individually used concept mapping for planning, study and revision would
have, on average, better scores in the battery of assessment tests than those who used only
the group concept map arising from each scenario.
=> This hypothesis has been supported by the results. The differences have been significant
but not dramatic.
(ii) As student knowledge and understanding increased, the maps for successively more
complex scenarios would contain more nodes and inter-linkages.
=> This was generally the case, but about one quarter of the students tended to produce
maps with an almost constant number of nodes and linkages regardless of the nature of the
scenarios.
(iii) Students with the fullest (most complete) maps would be those who did best in their final
assessment.
=> This was not well borne out experimentally. Most students with 'good' maps fell into the
quartiles immediately on either side of the mean, but were not well represented the highest
and lowest quartiles.
Students with 'poor' maps were distributed, almost equally, between the lowest and highest
quartiles.
Recommendations for practice by the authors are
1. Any device which aims to break down the linearity and compartmentalization in our
students' learning is to be encouraged. We believe that concept mapping has a contribution
to make to this.
2. The skills of concept mapping have to be taught, but thereafter maps are the private,
idiosyncratic aids and products of our students' learning.
3. It is very doubtful if concept maps should be used be a 'non-author' for assessment
purposes. To be useful learning tools, concept maps should be unsuitable reading for
another observer.
What I have learned from this article are .....
First, the problem based learning method (PBL) has been learned.
I did not know about PBL before reading this article although I have some knowledge
about problem solving activity. Now I'm thinking of PBL as a helpful learning method. If I
apply this method to my class, students will learn about how they solve the problem in
reality and how scientific concepts are connected. However, it has some limits to apply in
ordinary school settings. In this research, the students are medical school students who are
presumably smart and self-controlled. But our high school students are not intelligent
enough to study by themselves. Thus, it will take long time for them to finish one subject.
Moreover, teachers should prepare the scenarios for students, which means we need to
make time for it. When reading this article, I came up with a scenario in which students are
trying to solve the problem with air pollution by using chemistry (combustion of fossil fuels),
Earth Science (meteorological phenomena of the air) and physics (the laws about gas). In the
same way, if I put more efforts in designing scenarios, I can come up with many for my
general science class. So, I need to study more about PBL.
Second, the concept map has been learned.
Maybe ten years ago when I was involved in a teacher-retraining program, one of
instructors talked about using the concept map in teaching organic chemistry, and I found it
interesting. But I have been gotten around to it. Now I came to know the exact name of the
book 'Learning how to learn' by Novak and Gowin. So, I will read it.
The reason why I found CM fascinating is because CM provides me useful structures of
knowledge that help me understand and remember a lot of scientific concepts. Personally, I
don't like to memorize scientific contents without meaningful connecting with each other.
The fragments of knowledge cannot remain long in my memory. In this research, the
experimental group that are encouraged to use CM when they study show higher
achievement than control groups, especially students with high scores. I think this result
prove CM useful in Science teaching.
From my experience as a science teacher, many students who are interested in science
also don't like to learn by heart. Thus, I actually have been using concept maps every class
to convey the structure of the contents, but the maps are made by me, not students. So,
when I start to teach again, I'll give students the opportunities to come up with their own CM.
Last, I have found the assessment using concept maps invalid.
There are many resources for evaluation of students' performance such as paper tests,
projects, and reporting papers. And we need to make every effort to include various kinds of
resources to make evaluation valid. However, I wondered sometimes if there are enough
validity in my evaluating of students' papers because of the difference between girls' and
boys'. To illustrate my idea, I would quote the result of this article. Many students whose
maps came into the 'good' category are around mean in the distribution of the normal
assessment scores. However, some of the students who are using 'poor' maps for their
study actually show excellent achievements in their tests. Like this, this kind of taking notes
or drawing reports don't show consistency with normal paper tests, especially for girls. My
classes are coed, and girls are usually better than boys in their attitude toward taking notes
and drawing pictures. So, I have to give girls more scores on their experiment reports than
boys although I question their understanding of what I have taught. In a similar way, people
tend to have some kind of personal habit using concept maps. As a matter of fact, I want this
article to include analysis of gender of the students to show relation between gender and the
quality of CM. By the way, we teachers must be careful in making an assessment of students
not to depend too much on the appearance of papers.