Publication details
The use of concept maps in geography education: a systematic review
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | In contemporary geography education research, there is increasing talk about introducing new methods of assessment to aid the learning process. One such tool of assessment for learning is a concept map, which visually represents the structure of an individual's conceptual knowledge. These maps, made up of concepts linked by verbs into propositions, are mainly used for their ability to support and develop meaningful learning (Machado & Carvalho, 2020). In this poster, I present the results of a systematic review that aimed to map studies in the field of geography education that use concept maps. The review works with 40 empirical studies published between 2003 and 2023, written in English and searchable in Scopus and WoS. I chose two major criteria for their inclusion: 1) the maps had to be created directly by students or teachers, and 2) the topics had to be related to the content of the geography curriculum. In the analysis of the texts, I focused primarily on the research design and research objectives, the purpose and analysis of the concept maps, the teaching context (interventions, themes), participants and results. Results show that most of the studies used concept maps as a tool to reveal conceptual changes in students´ and teachers´ understanding after an intervention. The most common themes for the development of the concept maps were climate change and examples from human-environment interactions that require complex, critical and systematic thinking. The process of creating a concept map (concept mapping), which some authors believe to be more important for students than the final products themselves (Canas et al., 2017), is not addressed in any of the studies in the research set. Therefore, concept maps are most commonly used as a summative assessment tool, while they also demonstrate a potential for formative assessment. |