In this study we report on a test of a method that uses ontologies to individualize instruction by directly linking assessment results to the delivery of relevant content. Our sample was 2nd Lieutenants undergoing entry-level training on rifle marksmanship. Ontologies are explicit expressions of the concepts in a domain, the links among the…

Contemporary assessment practices in science education have undergone significant changes in recent decades. The basis for these changes and the resulting new assessment practices are the subject of this two-part paper. Part 1 considers the basis of assessment that, more than 25 years ago, was driven by the assumptions of decomposability and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the instructional effectiveness of adjunct post-questions, metacognitive process prompts, cognitive feedback and training in complementing semantic maps. Two hundred seventy Taiwanese subjects were randomly assigned to eight treatments. After interacting with their respective treatments each completed three…

The purpose of this study was to assess structural knowledge change across a two-week workshop designed to provide high-school teachers with training in Java and Object Oriented Programming. Both before and after the workshop, teachers assigned relatedness ratings to pairs of key concepts regarding Java and Object Oriented Programming. Their…

Nowadays the European Universities are worried about how to adapt higher education to the new European Higher Education Area, as proposed in the Bologna Magna Charta Universitatum of 1998, and signed by 32 European Education Ministers. One of the key points in this higher education reform was the introduction of new Master's level curricula. These…

This study investigated the score exchangeability of concept maps with problem-solving essays. Of interest was whether sixth-grade students' concept maps predicted their scores on essay responses that used concept map content. Concept maps were hypothesized to be alternatives to performance assessments for content-area domain knowledge in science.…

This paper centers on doctoral-level education candidates in the United States and Australia and their realms of engagement with information. On the basis of in-depth interviews with American and Australian doctoral students and academic librarians, we pose a critical reflection upon the two doctoral pedagogies as they relate to experiences of…

A concept map is a graph in which the nodes represent concepts, the lines between the nodes represent relations, and the labels on the lines represent the nature of the relations. Concept maps have been used to assess students' knowledge structures, especially in science education. Two concept mapping techniques, constructing a map and filling in…

When students use concept maps to construct and represent their understandings, these concept maps can be analyzed for representation of understanding from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In this study, a qualitative approach was utilized to extend the interpretations from the quantitative analysis of students' conceptual…

This paper reports a study on how prospective elementary school teachers make sense of teaching social studies through conceptual mapping, and therefore provide an opportunity for teacher educators to assess the value of conceptual mapping as a pedagogical tool. Pre- and post-course concept mapping was incorporated into three sections of an…

This paper presents a mixed-method evaluation design which utilizes concept mapping along with questionnaire and interviews. Recent developments in mixed-method evaluation have helped identify five purposes which mixed-method evaluation designs tend to serve. These are triangulation, complementarity, development, initiation, and expansion. The…

Research on notetaking as a learning strategy and on the related techniques of outlining and concept mapping is reviewed. The effectiveness of these techniques in helping the learner encode new information and their usefulness in interactive multimedia instruction are explored. Research strongly supports an external-storage function of notetaking…

The main author of this paper (J.W.) wrote the original as two separate essays for a Bachelor of Education unit at Northern Territory University (The Teaching of Science: EBE 483) for the second author (B.P.). This unit contains as a major component student/teacher research on children's ideas (misconceptions) in science. This paper seems very…

The present work has the purpose of showing the evolution of topics or mathematical concepts that are both relevant and with marked grades of abstraction. In this report is specifically described the utilization of metacognitive tools. These include concept maps, the Gowin heuristic vee, and the clinical interview. They are efficient in showing…

The generalizability of scores from different scales in performance assessment was studied. First, a concept map of teachers' and raters' perceptions about various scores and scales was constructed using multidimensional scaling analysis. Then, a generalizability study using a random, partially nested design was conducted to analyze the…