Dissertation for Master's Degree in Educational Psychology
Spring 2013
Abstract
Concept map is one of the teaching-learning strategies that can facilitate meaningful learning in students and display the relationships between course materials in a hierarchical manner. The current research is trying to investigate the effect of teaching strategy – Concept map learning in experimental science education of sixth grade male students of Khoi city in the academic year 92-93. The current research is applied and of semi-experimental type with pre-test and post-test and two groups of subjects, experimental and control group. The statistical population of this research includes all 1750 male students of the sixth grade of elementary school in the city of Khoi in the academic year of 1992-1993. The sample size was 120 people using Bartlett's table. The subjects of the present study include male students of the 4th grade of elementary school in Khoi city in the academic year of 1992-1993. These classes were selected by the purposeful sampling method, which was used due to the limitations of the research in terms of the special conditions of controlling the influencing variables, administrative issues, the satisfaction of the subjects, and the facilities. Also, to prevent the exchange of information between the two groups, two schools were purposefully selected in the present study, two classes of one school were selected as the control group (with conventional teaching methods) and two classes of the other school were selected as the experimental group (teaching with concept maps). In this research, in order to collect information from two researcher-made pretests (5th grade experimental science) and posttest (sixth grade experimental science), whose content validity was determined by using the table of specifications and for criterion validity, a correlation of 0.72 was obtained between the test and the students' class grades in the experimental science course for the pretest and 0.7 for the posttest, and their reliability was determined using the Coder Richardson 20 method, close to 0.7. These tests measured the levels of memory and understanding and the application of Bloom's cognitive domain. In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics including frequency, mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics including Lune's test, ANOVA and MANOVA of score difference were used. The findings of this research showed that the concept map has a positive effect on the academic progress of students at the level of understanding and application. But it was not effective at the memory level. In general, the result of this research showed that conceptual maps are effective in teaching experimental sciences.
Key words: 6th grade experimental sciences, conceptual map, academic progress, memorization, understanding, application
Chapter 1
Overview of the research
1-1 Introduction:
Undoubtedly, science education occupies an important part of the activities of schools, and the quality of science education and the level of scientific and technological literacy of people in society is one of the indicators of the development of that society. In fact, the science course is very important along with other courses, and in the research conducted, the weakness of Iranian students in the science course has been identified. Kiamanesh and Noori have reported that the findings of the third international study of Tims in the field of elementary science showed that the learning of Iranian students in science is very low (quoted by Ranjdoost, 2019).
In the new curricula of experimental science and its teaching methods, the main emphasis is on methods in which the student has an active role. In these methods, the main role is the responsibility of the student (Professor Hosseinlu, 2013).
At the same time, many accepted educational methods are influenced by past teaching methods and are based on traditional behaviorist views, which basically consider teaching to be the expression and transfer of facts and information to students, and students do not play an active role in the learning process. Contrary to the old views, newer views about the way of learning that emphasize the development of thinking students have been popularized. Among them is the view of constructivism. In this view, learning is a dynamic and internal process during which students acquire knowledge in an active way by relating new information to what they have learned before. It is thought that knowledge depends on the learner. Constructivism-based teaching method is a student-centered method in which the active participation of the learner in acquiring knowledge is emphasized.In this perspective, a connection between previous and new learning is sought, so people personally create their schemas or mental maps and in new learning these mental maps are revised, expanded and reconstructed (Hatami et al., 2008).
Many students have problems in learning concepts and the connection between their new concepts and their previous concepts and they cannot establish a logical connection between their new content and their previous content, since scientific concepts are non-linear. and are network-like, these concepts should be learned as organized networks and related information, not simply as a list of independent facts. Using those learning strategies – Teaching that can form or strengthen such coherent networks of knowledge will improve the learning outcomes of learners. One of these educational strategies, which is closely related to the constructivist perspective, is a concept map (Masrabadi et al., 2016).
A concept map is a graphical tool for organizing and displaying knowledge that was first invented by Joseph D. Novak at Cornell University. Curiosity about how learners learn helped Novak develop concept maps. Concept maps were first created with the aim of improving learning, but later studies showed that these maps are a useful tool for evaluation, showing the student's prior knowledge, summarizing the material learned, taking notes, helping to study, planning, supporting, increasing understanding and understanding, consolidating educational experiences, improving effective conditions for learning, teaching critical thinking, supporting cooperative learning, and organizing content (Saeidi et al., 2013).
Concept maps are a spatial representation of Concepts and the relationship between them are to understand and display the structure of knowledge that humans store in their brains (Esan [1], 2007). Concept maps are used in teaching, learning, curriculum development, and evaluation because many empirical studies have been conducted on the validity of concept maps (Chang [2] et al., 2001). Khamsan (2008) writes in the definition of conceptual map: " A concept map is a graphic representation of the main material of an area (subject) that the learner creates it.
There are various methods for preparing concept maps, but in terms of different plans in presenting information, all concept maps can be divided into three categories:
1) Spider (network) concept maps
2) Hierarchical concept maps
3) Circulation concept maps
Also, concept maps can be prepared both by pen and paper method and by using special software such as visual mind, smart ideas, Concept Tools Get Smart (Masrabadi and Stovar, 2018). Problem:
The lesson of experimental sciences is very important all over the world. By looking at the educational programs of developed countries, one can gain awareness of the importance and role of experimental sciences in schools. Therefore, education experts are trying to prepare programs for experimental sciences in order to get closer to the desired goals in every respect.
The program of science education in Iran is designed in such a way as to help learners in the way of producing knowledge and cultivating the power of logical thinking. In such a program, learners acquire the necessary knowledge in the process of flourishing their inner talents and through acquiring the necessary knowledge, learning the way to learn, acquiring the necessary skills for lifelong learning and strengthening a positive attitude towards science and technology. Educational goals and textbooks are prepared based on the active and constructivist approach, and efforts are made for schools to approach education in accordance with this approach and to avoid traditional teaching methods (Ahmadi, 2010).
For the teaching of experimental sciences, an environment should be provided that, in addition to being exciting for learning, should include a rich program to challenge students intellectually. It is very difficult to control the progress of a large number of students in the class and also to know whether they understand the concepts that we teach in the course of experimental sciences (Vanides[3] et al., 2005).
Therefore, choosing the appropriate teaching method that can both cause learning in students and the teacher can control the academic progress of students is of great importance.