The Characteristics of Concept Maps Developed by the Secondary Schools and University Students

Abstract

A concept maps is one of the teacher's tools to measure students' prior knowledge, encourage them to perform meaningful learning and to increase their achievement. It also helps students to overcome difficulties in understanding a concept, empower their critical, creative and metacognitive thinking skills. Besides, it can serve as an evaluation tool in learning, and an early warning to detect students' misconceptions. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of concept maps arranged by the junior high school, senior high school, and university students. This survey research was conducted to investigate the completeness of the students' concept maps, the types of the concept maps, and the students' misconceptions. Research participants consisted of 21 junior high school students, 19 senior high school students, and 35 university students. The results indicate that 98.7% of concept maps developed by the students did not have complete elements while the rest did. There were 90.7%of the concept maps were categorized into the Mixed type; 6.6% were Hub/Spokes, and 2.7% were Tree. Besides, 70.67% of the students' concept maps contained misconceptions.

Concept Maps as an Effective Formative Assessment Tool in Biology at Secondary Level

“…It is also obvious from the literature that formative assessment provides timely feedback to the students for their learning whereas the facilitator helps them to avoid misconceptions. According to Pangestuti and Zubaidah (2017), "student's misconceptions refer to the condition where students develop a concept which is contradictory to the basic science concept or the concept that has been agreed upon among experts"(p.212). Further added, these misconceptions are detected and corrected by using concept maps.…”

“…Concept mapping has been identified as an effective method that promotes critical thinking in students (Kaddoura et al 2016;Latif et al 2016). Concept maps can be used by teachers to measure the prior knowledge of students and to encourage them to meaningful learning to enhance achievement (Pangestuti & Zubaidah, 2017). Teachers can develop learning activities using concept maps (Llewellyn, 2013) cited by Mutodi and Chigonga(2016).…”

Improved Understanding of Science Concepts in Terms of the Pattern of Concept Maps Based on Scientific Literacy in Prospective Elementary School Teacher Students

“…It is drawn from the center into the sides. Kinchin (2000), Yin et al (2005), and Pangestuti et al (2017) state that in this model, the written concepts of the main concept were written and directed to the more specific concepts. The applied arrangement was topto-down and side-to-side.…”