Concept maps appear as personal tools for organizing information in a meaningful, valid and useful way for its author.
The information is organized in concepts, some more central and other more peripheral. These concepts are put in a hierarchical relation with each other through expressions or ideas (connecters).
Concept maps are graphical diagrams that can be used to organize knowledge in meaningful ways (Novak & Gowin, 1984) and are generally attributed to Ausubel work whit children in the process of understanding scientific knowledge.
For him human brain organizes information based in the pre-existing mental structures. Every information was organized in concept and these new concepts was connected to previously existing concepts (by comparation).
The primary process of learning is referred as subsumption (of the newest to the oldest information in the cognitive structure).
Therefore, learning is seen as being based on representational, superordinative and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information
(Ausubel, 1960, cit. by Lawton, 1977).
Concept mapping was originally developed to facilitate student learning and in Ausubels’ theoretical approach they function as advance organizers of information, by organizing key-concepts into a structural and complex cognitive framework that assumed a graphical representation.
McDaniel, E. Roth, B. & Miller, M. (2005). Concept mapping as a tool for curriculum design. Retrieved at January 29, 2009 from http://informingscience.org/proceedings/InSITE2005/I42f49McDa.pdf
ResponderEliminarLawton, J. T. (1977). The Use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of logical operations and social studies concepts American Educational Research Journal, 14 (1), 25-43.