This comparative pre-test/post-test quantitative study investigated the effect of an instructional strategy using concept mapping as a graphic organizer on the quality of persuasive writing compositions produced by fourth grade elementary school students. Six fourth grade classes were assigned as intact groups to three conditions: concept mapping treatment, four square treatment, and control. Participants wrote a pre-test essay prior to treatment. Treatment consisted of an instructional unit collaboratively developed by the researcher and classroom teachers on persuasive writing. Instruction for the three treatment groups was the same except for type of graphic organizer used (Concept Map, Four Square, or none). Following treatment, a post-test on persuasive writing was administered in the form of an essay. The concept mapping treatment group used concept mapping as their graphic organizer, the four square treatment group used the four square method, and the control group used no graphic organizer. Each of the pre- and post-test essays for both treatment and control groups were scored using rubrics created collaboratively by the researcher and participating teachers for Persuasive Content and for Engagement with Content. Only the concept mapping treatment group created concept maps during the post-test. Therefore, only the concept mapping treatment groups’ essays received a score for Sophistication of the Concept Map. One-way Analysis of Variance showed a significant mean difference in Persuasive Content and Engagement with Content between the three treatment groups. Concept Mapping had the highest mean scores on each, followed by Four Square and then the control. Pearson’s product-moment correlation showed a moderate positive correlation between Sophistication of Concept Map and both Persuasive Content and Engagement with Content. Positive correlations were also found between prior KCCT scores and persuasive writing scores and prior writing portfolio scores and persuasive writing scores. No significant correlation was found between gender and persuasive writing scores or race/ethnicity and persuasive writing scores. The results of this study indicate that Concept Mapping improves Persuasive Content and Engagement with Content when used as a graphic organizer in the writing of persuasive essays.

The work presented in this thesis focuses on educational issues in first-year biology courses at university. First-year courses are important because they have the potential to influence student retention and subsequent subject selection choices, as well as learning at higher levels. Further, biology is considered to be an important enabling subject in New Zealand because of the Government's drive towards a biotechnology-based knowledge economy. Specifically, the work in this thesis explores the educational implications of the increasingly diverse academic backgrounds of students entering first-year biology courses on teaching and learning in these courses. A social constructivist view of learning is adopted, in which prior knowledge of the learners is considered to have a significant influence on their learning. The social context of learning interactions also is considered to be important. The research involved three phases: identification of prior knowledge assumed by faculty; identification of actual prior knowledge of students; and the implementation and evaluation of an intervention programme based on concept mapping. In order to investigate faculty assumptions of student prior knowledge, 35 faculty from six New Zealand universities were interviewed. Document analysis and classroom observations provided data triangulation. The findings for this phase of the research suggest that faculty were aware of the diverse prior knowledge of students, and reported a tension between teaching from scratch in order to accommodate those with very limited prior knowledge; and the risk of boring those with more extensive relevant backgrounds. A range of concepts that are not explained during teaching (i.e., concepts it is assumed students understand) were identified, including biology-specific concepts and relevant chemical and mathematical concepts. In the second phase, research findings from phase one were used to develop a prior knowledge questionnaire administered in two successive years to all students enrolled in first-year biology courses at one New Zealand university. Data analysis for this phase suggests that although students with more extensive prior biology study were more likely to have a scientifically acceptable understanding of some key concepts, this was not true of all the concepts that were investigated, including chemical and mathematical concepts. The data also point to differences between what faculty expect students to know, and what students actually know. Furthermore, few students, regardless of the extent of prior biology study, were able to demonstrate understanding of the relationships between important biological concepts. In the third phase of the research, an intervention based on concept mapping was implemented and evaluated. Two of the six weekly tutorial classes associated with two first-year biology courses were used for the purposes of the intervention. The intervention differed from the other concept mapping studies reported in the literature in that its implementation was of long duration, viz., a period of 11 weeks. Students who participated in the intervention reported in 'tutorial experience questionnaires' and subsequent interviews that concept mapping helped them to learn the biology content covered during lectures, and to identify links between concepts. A large proportion of participants indicated that they used concept mapping for biology study outside of the intervention tutorial classes, and in some cases in other courses of study. Classroom management strategies appeared to contribute to the positive views about the use of concept mapping during tutorials. Specifically, the tutor modelled the use of concept mapping, but students were also given opportunities to construct their own maps. The role of the tutor in guiding discussions with students and providing feedback was also viewed as being important. Detailed analysis of course assessment tasks suggests that concept mapping enhanced learning for test questions that require understanding of links between concepts. Where tasks require only the recall of facts, concept mapping does not appear to make a statistically significant difference to student performance. The findings from the concept mapping intervention thus suggest that although concept mapping is a strategy that can be used effectively in tertiary biology tutorial classes, it is more worthwhile if the type of deep learning that is encouraged by the use of concept mapping is also the type of learning required to successfully complete assessment tasks. This raises the issue of whether the type of learning faculty specify in course objectives is the type of learning they actually seek to develop in course delivery and associated assessment regimes.

Supervision is essential to the development of school psychologists. Effective supervision cultivates professional competence and objectivity, enhances service delivery, encourages critical thinking and problem solving, and supports school psychologists to engage in continuous professional development activities. Yet, there is little information available about how school psychology practitioners and supervisors view supervision and in what ways actual supervision practices can improve. This study employed concept mapping, which is a structured analytic methodology that allows qualitative and quantitative data to be expressed as visual models to explore practicing school psychologists’ and supervisors’ perceptions about supervision by: (a) investigating what impediments hindered supervision efforts, (b) identifying what advocacy methods may increase supervision opportunities, and (c) examining whether and how school psychologists and supervisors agree on potential impediments and possible facilitators to improve supervision practices. Overall, participants reported that they provided or received supervision and were generally satisfied with it; however, practitioners received much less than the time recommended by national professional associations. Although, participants were generally pleased with supervision, they also believed that supervision needed more structure, ongoing formal evaluations, setting of goals, and time management. Further, few supervisors follow established models or used clinical techniques during supervision and there was a need for formal training of supervisors. Participants suggested the following to facilitate supervision in authentic school settings: (a) planning and committing to supervision, (b) setting parameters and guidelines, (c) identifying appropriate supervisors, (d) using alternative supervision formats, and (e) seeking guidance and direction from the National Association of School Psychologists. Recommendations for practice and future research are discussed.

This study is an action research on the application of concept mapping to improve English reading comprehension ability. It was assessed the effectiveness by utilizing the reading curriculum infusing concept mapping. The purposes of this study is promote junior high school students in educational priority area project who implemented concept mapping into the English reading instruction, also took an action research on curriculum development and did some reflection through action research. The object of the study is 21 students in the first grade of junior high school through the instructions of Concept Mapping Teaching on reading curriculum within 20 weeks. The origin of textbook is the fifteen units of Han Lin Publishing Co., Ltd and Festivals around the world of Oxford University Press. Conclusions¡G 1. Concept mapping teaching model should be processed in proper sequences including the readability level and students¡¦familiarization of the topics and fifty words text that is good for learning motivation in junior high school students in educational priority area project. 2. Students¡¦ difficulties in Concept mapping were their insufficient vocabulary and weren¡¦t identify the lower level of the text structure. They were lack of cultural stimulation that made a great impact on reading comprehension. Vocabularies mastery training was needed. Concept changing of the students with low achievement was notably influences by their classmates.This study show that small-group discussion can be a good way to find out their wrong concept in the light of others and then amend their thought in the small group discussion. 3. Concept mapping is helpful for students on getting key points, summary and detailed exposition.It can also improve students¡¦ ability on literal comprehension and inferential comprehension. 4. Teaching skills continusously improve through the action research. Concept mapping strategy could continuously embed in the regular reading classes for a long-term effect.Teachers can expand the scope of the research to other grades to study students¡¦ performance with different instructors.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Enrique Ortiz. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-110).

This article seeks to enhance multi criteria decision making by providing a scientic approach for decomposing and structuring decision problems. We propose a process, based on concept mapping, which integrates group creativity techniques, card sorting procedures, quantitative data analysis and algorithmic automatization to construct meaningful and complete hierarchies of criteria. The algorithmic aspect is covered by a newly proposed recursive cluster algorithm, which automatically generates hierarchies from card sorting data. Based on comparison with another basic algorithm and empirical engineered and real-case test data, we validate that our process efficiently produces reasonable hierarchies of descriptive elements like goal- or problem-criteria. (authors' abstract)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-244).

Background: Parents are an important influence on children's dietary intake and eating behaviors. However, the lack of a conceptual framework and inconsistent assessment of food parenting practices limits our understanding of which food parenting practices are most influential on children. The aim of this study was to develop a food parenting practice conceptual framework using systematic approaches of literature reviews and expert input. Method: A previously completed systematic review of food parenting practice instruments and a qualitative study of parents informed the development of a food parenting practice item bank consisting of 3632 food parenting practice items. The original item bank was further reduced to 110 key food parenting concepts using binning and winnowing techniques. A panel of 32 experts in parenting and nutrition were invited to sort the food parenting practice concepts into categories that reflected their perceptions of a food parenting practice conceptual framework. Multi-dimensional scaling produced a point map of the sorted concepts and hierarchical cluster analysis identified potential solutions. Subjective modifications were used to identify two potential solutions, with additional feedback from the expert panel requested. Results: The experts came from 8 countries and 25 participated in the sorting and 23 provided additional feedback. A parsimonious and a comprehensive concept map were developed based on the clustering of the food parenting practice constructs. The parsimonious concept map contained 7 constructs, while the comprehensive concept map contained 17 constructs and was informed by a previously published content map for food parenting practices. Most of the experts (52%) preferred the comprehensive concept map, while 35% preferred to present both solutions. Conclusion: The comprehensive food parenting practice conceptual map will provide the basis for developing a calibrated Item Response Modeling (IRM) item bank that can be used with computerized adaptive testing. Such an item bank will allow for more consistency in measuring food parenting practices across studies to better assess the impact of food parenting practices on child outcomes and the effect of interventions that target parents as agents of change.

D.Ed. / This thesis investigates concept maps as an effective learning strategy for Business English vocabulary development of first year students at the former Technikon Witwatersrand. The research has been conducted with first year students in the National Diploma in Human Resources Management at the Faculty of Business Management (the Auckland Park Bunting Road Campus). The study involved research on the understanding and use of the subject vocabulary of two groups of students. The problem of this study was that the majority of the former Technikon Witwatersrand students had difficulty understanding and using technical terminology related to Business English writing. The research question for this study was: To what extent does the use of concept maps help to improve the business vocabulary of first year ND Human Resources Management students registered at the TWR? The aim of the study was to teach students how to draw concept maps in order to make use of meaningful (conceptual) learning to improve their Business English vocabulary, and it is assumed that this would empower the learners to write better academically. The methodology used was that of action research in order to make an inductive analysis of the students‟ acquisition of Business English vocabulary. A mixed purposeful sampling scheme was chosen. Triangulation was used as method to integrate the literature review with the qualitative and quantitative research tools. The quantitative data in this study indicated that the students in Group A enhanced their performance in the vocabulary tests and examinations in their different first year subjects and the qualitative data indicated the students‟ feelings and attitudes about the construction of concept maps and learning Business English vocabulary. The research tools were questionnaires, concept maps, journals, vocabulary lists and tests, examinations, paragraph writing, and focus group interviews. The findings made were that students who constructed concept maps of the business vocabulary did perform somewhat better than the students who did not make use of concept maps. The conclusion from this study was that learners who use concept maps can perform better in learning business vocabulary.

Magister Educationis - MEd / The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties encountered by the grade ten township learners with respect to the concept of electricity. More specifically, the study attempted to explore the learners’ scientific knowledge by investigating their conceptions or alternative conceptions about electricity; the influence of learners’ age, career interests and gender issues on their conceptions of electricity and; the effectiveness of concept mapping (a pedagogic tool designed by Novak in the 1970s) in facilitating the learners’ understanding of electricity. The study was premised on socio-cultural constructivism as well as meaningful learning as espoused by Ausubel (1968).A Pre-Test-Post-Test Control Group Design was adopted in the study in which two comparable groups were used. The data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative research methods and the instruments that were used included a conception of electricity (COET) (originally adopted and administered in the Western Cape, Northern Cape provinces and in Norway in 1999 for the purpose of Science and Technology Literacy Project (STLP) with the hope that their reliability and validity was guaranteed); selected learner interviews and evaluation forms.The summary of findings has suggested that the Grade ten learners held misconceptions about the concept of electricity even after they were exposed to intervention that included concept mapping. In terms of the gender issues, there was no significant difference in performance between the boys and girls though the females outperformed their male counterparts at both groups. The underachievement of the older learners compared to the younger ones has also surfaced and that is against expectation since a number of studies carried out earlier (see Ogunniyi (1999)) have already corroborated such findings. With respect to career interests, what the learners indicated as their future dreams, i.e. what they intend to do and become, seems to have been influenced their performance at the pre- and post-test stages.