There have been many articles written about the variety of ways faculty and students define eportfolios, collect artifacts, write reflections, and use finished eportfolios. However, little has been written about the dynamic process of adopting electronic portfolios in schools of education. This study employs cross-case analysis to investigate…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) examine whether or not the construction of concept maps by students improves their achievement and ability to solve higher order questions in chemistry, (2) investigate the differential effect of the treatment by gender and achievement level, and (3) explore the relationships between performance on concept…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether hemisphericity and learning type are related to concept mapping attributes of preservice and inservice teachers. In addition, differences in concept mapping by program (i.e., preservice elementary/middle school and secondary science teachers and inservice elementary/middle school teachers),…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of two different types of post-instruction concept interviews: one that did and one that did not embed a concept mapping process as means of eliciting students' post-instruction conceptual understandings about the nature of, source of, and problems caused by chlorofluorocarbons…

This paper is based on the belief that knowledge must be organized in order to be accessible from long term memory and this kind of organization requires connected understanding. It reports on the development and validity of the select-and-fill-in concept map format designed to measure middle school students' connected understanding of selected…

As illustrated by a concept map in chapter 1, this book discusses three concepts: (1) the nature of knowledge, its capture, creation, and use; (2) the nature of human learning; and (3) a theory of education tying together the first two concepts. Chapter 2 discusses the need for a theory of education to resolve numerous questions, issues, and…

Researchers use an array of measures to provide lenses and levels of magnification for exploring teacher candidates' thinking. This paper describes five measures in terms of their costs, benefits, and the kinds of data each yields. These measures include a demographic questionnaire, concept mapping, a learning questionnaire, stimulated recall…

Symbols occupy a pivotal position between processes to be carried out and concepts to be thought about. They allow us both to do mathematical problems and to think about mathematical relationships. In this presentation, the discontinuities that occur in the learning path taken by different students, leading to a divergence between conceptual and…

This paper explains the process of creating and managing concept maps, using reflection as a focus for its argument. Section 1, What is a Concept Map?, highlights the background and definition of concept mapping, explains how maps signify virtual conceptual structures, looks at structural knowledge, provides an example of a concept map, and…

This paper gives an overview of the Inspiration Software, a package that is designed to facilitate the construction and use of concept maps in the classroom. The first section discusses concept mapping, defined as any graphic production that is constructed specifically to represent knowledge. The following basic functions of Inspiration are then…

Presents instructional techniques aimed at enhancing learning in the engineering science classroom, including mind or concept mapping, a variation of the one-minute paper termed a discovery sheet, and the inclusion of discussion of the nature of scientific paradigm shifts. Discusses students' reactions to these techniques and outlines a case study…

Explores the use of concept mapping in a college course on evolution and the effect of the use of graphics in the instructional process on the construction of a concept map. Results indicate a positive correlation between concept map scores and the number of graphics used by the instructor during lecture. (JRH)

Employees a concept-mapping procedure to develop a classification of young men who have been responsible for one or more teen pregnancies. Results confirm that it is possible to cluster these men into different types according to their motivations and other attributes. Discusses how school counselors may use these results to develop appropriate…

Presents a qualitative study of five groups of college students using Inspiration computer software to construct concept maps in an educational technology class. Considers how the maps changed during the semester, how course concepts were applied in a final project, and whether students reported that the collaborative concept mapping activity…

Considers the problem of how to track a student's real progress in learning and evaluates the success of concept mapping in constructing a learning environment in a Finnish primary school. Highlights include the semiotic paradigm developed by Charles Sanders Peirce; and results of a longitudinal study. (Author/LRW)