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Primary science: supporting children’s learning
Primary science: supporting children’s learning

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3.2 Concept mapping

Another way to find out about children’s existing knowledge is to use concept maps. These are not the same as brainstorms, spider diagrams or flow charts. Concept mapping is concerned with the organisation of ideas and the relationships between concepts (the term ‘concept’ is used to mean any term or phrase that has a scientific meaning). They are more sophisticated than mind maps because they reveal the conceptual understanding of the person devising the map. Pairs of concepts are connected by words and phrases along an arrow that shows the direction in which each pair should be read. An example is given in Figure 6.

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Figure 6 An example of a concept map
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A concept map for ‘water’ is shown. There is a series of text boxes linked by single headed arrows, with text labels running beside the arrows. A text box at the top which reads ‘water’ is linked directly by an arrow labelled ‘is made of’ to a text box with ‘molecules’ written in it. From ‘molecules’ one arrow labelled ‘are made of’ points to a box labelled ‘atoms’, and a second arrow labelled ‘have’ leads to ‘heat energy’. ‘Atoms’ also has an arrow labelled ‘have’ which leads to the same ‘heat energy’ box. From the ‘water’ box at the top, another arrow labelled ‘exists in different’ points to a text box that reads ‘states’. ‘States’ is joined to the ‘heat energy’ box by an arrow in the opposite direction, so that together the text boxes and arrow read ‘heat energy affects states’. Three downward arrows labelled ‘can be’ link ‘states’ to three boxes which read ‘solid’, ‘liquid’ and ‘gas’. ‘Solid’ connects by an arrow labelled ‘water is’ to ‘ice’. ‘Liquid’ connects by an arrow labelled ‘water is’ to ‘water vapour’.

Figure 6 An example of a concept map

Concept maps are not flow diagrams. Although a concept might be linked to several others, the reading of a relationship is between pairs of words only. You do not link three concepts to make a longer phrase, for example. Each pair of linked concepts stands independently from the other pairs.