| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立花蓮師範學院 === 國民教育研究所 === 90 === Abstract
This study aimed at constructing a model of concept-mapping strategies (CMS) to provide a new approach to elementary social studies instruction. There were four main purposes of this study: first, exploring the effects of the CMS on students’ achievements in the cognitive domain; second, analyzing how CMS was implemented in the social studies class; third, analyzing the processes of the CMS; forth, exploring students’ learning attitude when the CMS was used.
The CMS was used in the experimental group to provide a visual framework for understanding and organizing elements upon the acquisition of social studies concepts, while the general instruction method was adopted in the control group.
The 66 subjects participating in the 13-week experiment were fifth graders in two classes. These two classes were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group, and compared the differences of students’ cognitive achievements by three cognitive protests and posttests. Furthermore, in order to explore the process and products of the CMS, participant observation, data analysis, questionnaire survey, and interview methods were applied to this study.
The four major findings are summarized as follows.
1.The CMS improved students’ cognitive achievement in the social studies:
(1) The experimental group scores significantly higher than the control group on cognitive test performance.
(2) The experimental group scores significantly higher than the control group on “extended response essay questions”, but has no significant difference from the control group on “true-false items” and “multiple-choice items”.
(3) The experimental group scores significantly higher than the control group on“ higher-order thinking questions”, but has no significant difference from the control group on “basic-order thinking questions”.
2.The findings in the process of experiment are:
(1) Responsibility should shift gradually from the teacher to teacher-student cooperation and then to the students , as training students learn how to organize information and how to map.
(2)The CMS has nine types of concept mapping models in combination with six types of concept maps, which can go with history description, topic discussion, information collection, value clarification, and action practice to use.
3. The students benefited more in cooperative concept mapping groups than in individual concept mapping, which not only facilitated their understanding of concepts, but also developed their social communication ability.
4. The experimental group had positive attitude toward the concept-maping strategies.
At the end of this paper, suggestions are addressed as to the application of these instructions, and recommendations are likewise made as to further researches in this field.
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