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Concept ofConcept Map in Learning
Dr J R Sonwane
Associate Professor
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar, INDIA
Abstract
Concept maps are tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include
concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between
concepts or propositions, (indicated by a connecting line and linking word) between
two concepts. Linking words on the line specify the relationship between the two
concepts. Concept map is very effective tool for concept clarification and learning
new thing. keep in mind this thing this paper discusses concept of concept map and its
use. This paper provides background of concept map and It discusses some tools
about concept map.
Keywords. Concept map, Learning
Introduction
Concept maps are graphical tools for
organizing and representing knowledge.
They include concepts, usually enclosed in
circles or boxes of some type, and
relationships between concepts indicated
by a connecting line linking two concepts.
Words on the line, referred to as linking
words or linking phrases, specify the
relationship between the two concepts. We
define conceptas a perceived regularity in
events or objects, or records of events or
objects, designated by a label.
Several attempts have been made
to represent cognitive structure
graphically. For instance, the 'association
memory' of the information processing
theorists (Newell 1977), the 'entailment
structure' of conversation theory (Pask
1976), the 'frame-system' theory for
memory (Minsky 1977), and the networks
of semantics (Rumelhart 1977) all
integrate a means of representation aimed
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at understanding and modelling the
learning process, and each is set within a
theoretical program. However concept
mapping, which was first developed in
Cornell University (Novak 1979), differs
from these in being a practical strategy
aimed at increasing students' ability to
learn meaningfully (Ausubel, Novak and
Hanesian 1978), and at developing their
understanding of their own learning
approaches and knowledge base (Novak
1985).
Concept mapping is essentially apractical tool developed to assist teachers
and students with instruction and learning.
Essentially, a concept map is constructed
to represent the relationship between
concepts in the mind of a learner, teacher
or curriculum planner. It is structured
around nodes which identify concepts,
with these nodes being connected by lines
labelled to indicate the relationship
between neighboring concepts (Nersessian
1989).
Novak (1981) described a
procedure for helping students organize
concepts into meaningful structures
through use of the paper-pencil task called
concept mapping. As students make
concept maps they reorganize newly
acquired and existing concepts into ahierarchical network and represent
relationships among the concepts. At the
same time relationships are clarified and
integrated into larger knowledge
structures. The task requires a student to
think in multiple directions and to switch
back and forth between different levels of
thought (Ault 1985). Novak (1981)
defined concepts as regularities in events
or objects which are designated by a sign
or symbol. Concepts in a map relate to
each other by connecting lines that define
propositions or specific relationships
between concepts. The acquisition of such
relationships is the key element in
meaningful learning. Concept mapping
allows students to connect concepts in a
variety of relationships. Students increase
their understanding of subject content as
they search for personal meanings of
concepts, without which they cannot make
connections in the map.
Strategies for teaching studentshow to develop their own concept maps
have been described by Ault (1985);
Chandran (1985); Fensham, Gerrard and
West (1981);Malone and Dekkers (1984);
Novak and Gowin (1984); and Stewart
(1980). Using a few conventions for
drawing concept maps, students can
construct maps using concepts given by
the teacher, concepts taken from a text or
concepts from their existing knowledge.
Novak (1988b) contends that, in the
experience of his research colleagues,
"There is no domain of knowledge (or
'skills') for which concept maps cannot be
used as a representational tool." In much
of the research reported to date, concept
mapping has been investigated as a
strategy for meaningful learning (Novak &
Gowin 1984). Researchers have taughtstudents to construct their own concept
maps and have argued that concept
mapping assists learners to "know what
they know." The research also indicates
that concept mapping facilitates students'
abilities to solve new problems and to
answer questions that require application
or blend of concepts (e.g. Bascones &
Novak 1985; Novak, Gowin & Johansen1983; Pankratius & Keith 1987).
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Figure 1 Concept map
Source: http://cmap.ihmc.us/publications/researchpapers/theorycmaps/Fig1
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Uses of Concept Maps
Concept mapping has several potential
uses, as reported in the outcome of a
number of studies. It has been used as a
tool for research, particularly to investigatelearners' existing conceptions and changes
in conceptions (Cunliffe 1994; Dana
1993), for curriculum development
(Edmondson 1995; Pearson and Hughes
1986), for assessment (Schick 1991;
Schreiber and Abegg 1991), for identifying
difficulties in understanding (Songer and
Mintzes 1994;Trowbridge and Wandersee
1994), and for promoting meaningful
learning (Novak, Gowin and Johansen
1983)
Because of the flexibility of
concept maps, they can be used in a
variety of situations for several different
purposes as said above. Three such uses
are: (1) as curricular tools; (2) as
instructional tools; and (3) as a means of
evaluation.
Curricular Uses of Concept Maps.
Researchers have found that the Ausubel
model of learning emphasizing concept
acquisition coupled with a model of
curriculum posed by Johnson (1977) is a
powerful approach to curriculum
development. Within such a framework,
concept maps can take on an important
role. In Johnson's view, a curriculum is "asstructured series of intended learning
outcomes"( ILOs).The ILOs may be
affective, cognitive, or psychomotor in
nature, although for this paper we have
chosen to focus on the cognitive. This does
not mean that we feel skill and especially
affective ILOs are not appropriate in
biology teaching. A most significant
contribution of Johnson's model is the
distinction he makes between curriculum
and instruction.
Curricular focus is on selecting and
organizing the ILOs: those cognitions,
cognitive competencies, skills and affects
the curriculum developer most wants
students to "possess" as a result of the
curriculum. The appropriateness of the
examples might be determined by such
factors as time of year, geographic
location, and ease of manipulation. The
most important determinant should be the
backgrounds and interests of the students.
The choice of the examples in the Johnsonmodel is an instructional rather than a
curricular decision, unless of course the
examples are to be learned, and thus are in
fact also ILOs. As educators, we often get
bogged down in the "trees" of examples so
that our students do not see the conceptual
"forest." Johnson's distinction between
curriculum (choosing and organizing the
concepts and thus selecting ILOs) vs.
instruction (selecting the instructional,
content with which to explicate the
concepts) is important. How often in
evaluation of students do we test for the
knowledge of a particular example without
ever coming to grips with the question of
whether or not they understand the
underlying concepts? It is certainly
conceivable that one may know many
specific examples without having an
understanding of the conceptual
interpretations possible for those
examples. Where do concept maps fit into
these views of curriculum? Concept maps
can be an important tool to focus the
attention of the curriculum designer
(again,i deally, the instructor) on the
teaching of concepts and on the distinction
between curricular and instructionalcontent-that is, between content that is
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intended to be learned vs. that which will
serve as a vehicle for learning. A
completed concept map, including class
and major relational concepts, becomes in
the Johnson model the cognitivecomponent of the curriculum. Construction
of a concept map that portrays structure in
a discipline could thus be considered as
identical to the task of developing the
cognitive components of a curriculum.
Instructional Uses of Concept Maps.
When a map includes concrete
(instructional) examples to be used to
explicate the concepts and propositions tobe taught, then it becomes a guide to
instruction as well as to curriculum . There
are a range of possible instructional uses of
concept maps. Bogden (1976)
systematically used concept maps in a
college-level genetics course at Cornell
University. He constructed maps with
proportionally large instructional
components to correspond to the content of
individual lectures in the course, and then
used them as a focus for discussion
sections. Some students used these
sessions and thus the maps as supplements
to or substitutes for lectures, laboratories,
and readings; others considered the maps
valuablere view materials that helped to tie
different sections of the course together.
Some students felt the concept maps were
unnecessary, but the purpose in using them
was for the course instructors to provide an
additional pathway to the learning of
genetics concepts. Therefore, they did not
expect all students to choose the concept
map alternative as one they wished to use.
Concept maps are only tools, and a
functional approach should be taken with
them. Their value lies their flexibility and
utility, in instruction as well as incurriculum. A second instructional use of
concept maps is to have students construct
maps describing what they know about a
given subject area. It is recommended that
any student asked to do this be well versed
in what is expected of him/her andtherefore time must be spent beforehand
thoroughly introducing students to the
concept map idea, including what the
instructor wants represented by the two
dimensions of the map. It might also be
wise to ask only students who have a good
grasp of the subject to try and construct
maps of it. Constructing a concept map is
often a very difficult task for one who
knows the discipline well; a student with
vague knowledge is likely to be
overwhelmed and confused by the task if
s/he is not properly prepared. On the other
hand, the benefits in understanding are
likely to be very great to anyone who tries
to map a conceptual area with which s/he
is familiar even an "expert" who is
compelled to try to represent a discipline
in a new way must deliberately rethinkmany assumed relationships and may
enrich his/her" feel" for the subject by
carrying out a concept mapping exercise.
Concept Maps as Evaluative Tools. We
can view the process of evaluation of
knowledge as one which ends with the
ranking of students for such purposes as
assigning grades and helping to determine
admission to institutions of higher
learning, or pass/fail judgments made upon
mastery of a prescribed set of objectives.
Many methods are used to this end, and
the evaluative uses of concept maps we are
about to describe might be as appropriate
as any other for the purpose of ranking
students. We feel, however, that an at least
parallel aim of evaluation should be the
assessment of student knowledge or gapsin knowledge for the purpose of aiding
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instruction. Students thus become part of a
feedback system in which the results of the
assessment of their knowledge have
curricular and instructional implications. If
we think of evaluation as an assessment ofstudent knowledge, then it is importan to
focus in test design on what we think of as
the conceptual structure of biology. Once
again, a concept map, which is considered
to be the cognitive component of the
curriculum( portraying structure in the
subject matter), should be quite useful in
evaluating student knowledge of that
structure. Rowell used concept maps in
the area of energy, continuity of life, and
properties of matter in trying to gain
knowledge of second graders'
understandings of those concepts. His
evaluative format was a partially
structured Piagetian-type interview, and he
found that having a concept map in front
of him as he interviewed children helped
to keep his questions focused on the
concepts and relationships in which he wasinterested. Bogden used a genetics concept
map to structure an integrative final
examination question for a college
genetics course. He constructed what he
felt was an ideal answer, made a concept
map from it, and then mapped student
answers. The degree of correspondence
between the "ideal" map and student maps
was the basis for each student's grade on
the questions. In using concept maps in
this way, however, one must be careful in
translating from answers to maps it is easy
to turn this method into a "key word" sort
of analysis, and lose track of the substance
of answers. Since Bogden in usingt his sort
of evaluative method was actually engaged
in ranking as opposed to assessing, any
"holes" or missing parts of answers,
although impossible to interpret, were still
a part of the evaluation and thus the grade
The CmapTools Software Toolkit
The CmapTools (Caas et al., 2004)
software (available for download at:
http://cmap.ihmc.us) developed at the
Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition brings together the strengths of
concept mapping with the power of
technology, particularly the Internet and
the World Wide Web (WWW). The
software not only makes it easy for users
of all ages to construct and modify concept
maps in a similar way that a word
processor makes it easy to write text, it
allows users to collaborate at a distance inthe construction in their maps, publish
their concept maps so anybody on the
Internet can access them, link resources to
their maps to further explain their contents,
and search the WWW for information
related to the map.
The software allows the user to
link resources (photos, images, graphs,videos, charts, tables, texts, WWW pages
or other concept maps) located anywhere
on the Internet or in personal files to
concepts or linking words in a concept
map through a simple drag-and-drop
operation. Links to these resources are
displayed as icons underneath the
concepts. Clicking on one of these icons
will display a list of links from which the
user can select to open the linked resource.
Using CmapTools, it is possible to use
concept maps to access any material that
can be presented digitally, including
materials prepared by the mapmaker. In
this way, concept maps can serve as the
indexing and navigational tools for
complex domains of knowledge, as will be
illustrated later with NASA materials on
Mars (Briggs et al., 2004). By facilitatingthe linking between concept maps, learners
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can construct Knowledge Models (Caas et
al., 2003; Caas et al., 2005), which are
collections of concept maps with linked
resources about a particular topic,
demonstrating that their understandingabout a domain is not limited to a single
concept map.
Discussion
In short, it can be concluded on the base of
above discussion, concept maps are a
powerful tool to help students learn about
the structure of knowledge and the process
of knowledge production. The visualnature of concept maps helps in the
process of concept formation and
assimilation.Concept maps are good
conceptual benchmarks from which
students can construct richer meanings. It
provides them with the opportunity to
analyze their prior knowledge, plan for the
addition of new information, guide inquiry
from what is known toward what is not,
and encourage the recognition of
relationships in content areas . One must
remember that we live in a world of
concepts rather than a world of objects,
events, and situations and there are many
internal factors that influence concept
learning. We must also remember that the
goal of concept mapping is not to produce
a pretty graphic but to enrich the
meaning of a learners educationalexperience.
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Paper Received on 10 May, 2012
Paper Reviewed on 12 June, 2012
Paper Accepted on 25 June, 2012