Concept Mapping

General

Concept mapping is a cognitivist instructional design model developed by Joseph Novak and his colleagues in 1972 as they worked on understanding how children's knowledge of science changes1) Novak, J. D., & Musonda, D. A Twelve-Year Longitudinal Study of Science Concept Learning. American Educational Research Journal, 28(1), 117-153. 1991. . Some of the first concept maps were, however, proposed by some other authors as well2) Stewart, J., Van Kirk, J., & Rowell, R. Concept maps: A tool for use in biology teaching. American Biology Teacher, 41(3), 171-175. 1979. , but concept maps in their fullest form were introduced by Novak in 19813) Novak, J. Applying learning psychology and philosophy to biology teaching. The American Biology Teacher, 43(1), 12 – 20. 1981. . In Novak's words, concept map is a

“visual representation of the relationships between concepts held by an individual, materials of a lecture, textbook, or laboratory exercise. By concept mapping even old and familiar material, we often recognize new relationships and meaning.”4) Novak, J. D. Introduction to concept mapping.

Novak's ideas were influenced by David Ausubel's assimilation theory and his hierarchical knowledge structure suggestions5) Novak, J. D, and A. J Canas. The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them. Technical Report IHMC CmapTools, 2008. .

What is concept mapping?

Concept mapping is the process of creating concept maps,

“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 concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label.”5)

As explained, on the visual level, a concept map is a hierarchical (general to specific) diagram containing nodes and links, both labeled with words or symbols. The most important concept is usually placed in the center of the map or at its top. Novak describes the concept map building process in following steps4):

Concept map as introduced by Novak and Gowin. Image borrowed from: Novak, Joseph Donald, & Gowin, D. B. Learning how to learn. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

1.	Identify key concepts of the material and list them or write them on pieces of paper to make them movable.
2.	Rank concepts by placing most general ones at the top of the map with respect to the context of the matherial.
3.	Add other more specific concepts under the more inclusive ones.
4.	Connect concepts by labeled lines. Labels should add meaning by defining relationships between connected concepts.
5.	If desired, specific examples of concepts can also be added below concept labels.
6.	If desired, change or reorganize the map in accordance with the newly noted relations between the concepts. Concept maps for the same topic can be organized in more possible ways.

Concepts maps can be useful to both teachers and students. To students concept maps give the ability to organize and assess their own knowledge, and learn through adding new concepts to the existing framework of the concept map6) Zeilik, M. Classroom Assessment Techniques: Concept Mapping. . Such process of creating and learning using a concept map is, according to Novak4), often accompanied by positive feelings. A teacher can use concept maps to6):

identify and organize concepts he is about to teach,

gain insight to what the students already know or how they view the topic from concept maps drawn by the students,

organize information into meaningful categories and relate those categories on a more general level,

synthesize and integrate learned information thereby strengthening long-term retention, and

teach terms, facts, and concepts of given topic, develop creativity and higher-level thinking skills, strategies, and habit.

An important property of concept maps is that learning through adding new concept to them is inherently meaningful learning, since it establishes clear connections with the existing knowledge. Rote learning on the other hand would be the result of lack of established connections to prior knowledge and causes forgetting of the learned information in 4-6 weeks4)7) See also: Ausubel's assimilation theory. .

A step-by-step example on how to introduce and work on concept maps with students in classes can be found in Michael Zeilik's article on concept mapping.

Concept mapping presents the process of building concept maps. In order to successfully build concept maps, their terminology needs to be clarified. Novak defines concepts as patterns or regularities in objects (things) or events (happenings).4)

For example, the concept “dog” is formed by a set of common characteristics of dogs. “Chihuahua”, a specific kind of dog, would here be an object. Every person has a different “dog” concept since the set of common characteristics forming it may vary from person to person and generally depends on experience, context and perspective. Still, these concepts are usually similar enough to enable people to successfully communicate and think in terms of concepts and change them over time.

Improved concept map, as suggested by Ahlberg. Image borrowed from: http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/m... Click on the picture to follow the link.

A set of improvements to concept mapping has been suggested by Ahlberg8) Ahlberg, M. Varieties of Concept Mapping :

all concepts are interpreted as main elements and should be inside frames, which was not the case in Novak's earlier works

there are no limits on the length of the labels since longer labels are sometimes required to offer accurate explanation

connections should have arrowheads in order to point the direction of the connection

pictures, videos or sounds may also be connected in a concept map

concept mapping is a general method for knowledge representation and does not have to be associated exclusively with Ausubel's assimilation theory

concept maps do not have to be hierarchical (for example cyclic concept maps9) Safayeni, F., Derbentseva, N., & Cañas, A. J. Concept maps: A theoretical note on concepts and the need for cyclic concept maps. Manuscript submitted for publication. 2003. )

a good concept map should have only one instance of each concept, which was not the rule in some Novak's works, sometimes due to a too large number of links connecting a certain concept

sometimes it is useful to suggest a way of reading a concept map (for example top to bottom or bottom to top)

Concept maps were earlier drawn by hand, but today a number of computer applications like the free IHMC CmapTools can be used to enhance this process.

Criticisms

Concept mapping is a very well accepted and widely used method, but it:

was designed mostly to represent declarative and not procedural knowledge or algorithms,

is a rather difficult and sometimes time-consuming cognitive task which requires training, and

there is no standardized way of scoring/comparing concept maps10) Kharatmal, Meena, and G. Nagarjuna. A proposal to refine concept mapping for effective science learning. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Concept Mapping, 2006. .

Keywords and most important names

Concept mapping, concept maps, concept, object, meaningful learning

Joseph Novak

Bibliography

Novak, J. D. Introduction to concept mapping.

Novak, Joseph D. & Cañas, Alberto J. The Origin and Development of Concept Maps.

Zeilik, M. Classroom Assessment Techniques: Concept Mapping.

Novak, Joseph D. & Cañas, Alberto J. The Origin and Development of Concept Mapping.

Read more

Novak, Joseph Donald, & Gowin, D. B. Learning how to learn. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Novak, J. D, & Canas, A. J. The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them. Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Pensacola Fl, 2008.