1. Use of Fill-in Concept Maps To Assess Middle School Students' Connected Understanding of Science.
- Author
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Los Alamos National Lab., NM. and Schau, Candace
- Abstract
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 science concepts and processes. The validity concerns discussed are related to map assessment content, cognitive processes required to complete the map assessment tasks, technical quality, and relationships of map scores and patterns of map scores to those from other assessment measures. Phase I included development and field testing of a variety of possible mapping formats. Phase II involved the creation, field testing, and revision of the most promising, the select-and-fill-in concept map, into its final form. In Phase III the format was tested with ethnically diverse middle school science students. Findings indicate that the select-and-fill-in concept map format can be used with ethnically diverse middle school students to measure their connected understanding of science. Contains 23 references. (Author/JRH)
- Published
- 1997