Effects of Concept Mapping on Chinese High School Students’ Critical Thinking
Abstract
Concept mapping, as an effective visual tool to facilitate learning and teaching, has been widely adopted in various fields and disciplines since its innovation. However there remains relatively few research on the effectiveness of the concept-mapping method in enhancing high school students’ critical thinking skills in China, where students are confronted with challenges in fostering critical thinking abilities and educators lack experience in teaching critical thinking. Moreover, previous studies have provided limited information on the effects of different types of concept mapping activities on students’ critical thinking abilities. This study aims to examine the effects of the concept-mapping method on the development of Chinese high school students’ critical thinking skills and explore students’ perception of the correlation between their critical thinking skills and the concept mapping activities. Participants will be recruited from a high school in Henan Province in China. The study will randomly designate two classes as the high-directed concept mapping group (Class A) and the low-directed concept mapping group (Class B) to explore the difference in students’ critical thinking skill development between two types of concept mapping activities. Data collection will include concept map scores, critical thinking survey scores, and interviews. Concept map scores will be compared with critical thinking survey scores using Pearson correlation analysis to examine the correlation between critical thinking skills and Novak and Gowin’s concept map scoring rubric. Furthermore, the critical thinking survey scores of both groups will be compared using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to assess the difference in the development of critical thinking skills. Interviews will be interpreted using an inductive analysis approach to explore students’ perceptions of the connection between the concept mapping activities and their critical thinking ability.
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