The Future of Education

The concept map in education is a teaching technique which aims to presents concrete data to the learner visualizing the relationship between knowledge and concepts in a hierarchical structure from general to specific. The aim of the concept maps is to write the learners prior knowledge and new acquired knowledge so that meaningful learning is obtained. The purpose of this study is to find the effects of the concept maps of 11th grade students on their achievement in mathematics at school. I this descriptive study, the samples were 29 students at SAC American College, Istanbul. In the first phase of this study, the samples of the study were taught how to create a concept map using meaningful learning over a period of 3 weeks. During this period, Novak’s (1998) concept map teaching method was applied. The samples were taught specific mathematical quadratic functions over 3 weeks. The samples were given 25 quadratic concepts and asked to create a concept map. A day later, examination with 15 multiple-choice questions was given to the samples. The Novak’s concept map evaluation form (1984) was used to evaluate the maps of the students. It was found that there was a positively high correlation (r=.70) between the scores gained on the multiple-choice test and those gained on the concept maps. It was also seen that students were successful at creating concept map. Through the use of an independent t-test, it was found that there wasn’t a meaningful difference between the scores of female and male students. As a result, in general, although the samples were able to retain the knowledge, organize the concepts and relate the concepts to each other, the concept mapping method was found to be time consuming.

Keywords: Concept mapping, mathematics achievement.

References:
[1] Novak, J.D. (1998), Learning, Creating and Using Knowledge, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Mahwah, New Jersey.
[2] Novak, J.D., Govin, D.B. (1984), Learning How To Learn, Cambridge University Press, New York.