An Exploration of the Concept Map as an Interview Tool to Facilitate the Externalization of Students’ Understandings about Global Atmospheric Change

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of two different types of interviews—one that did (POSTICM) and one that did not (POSTI) embed a concept-mapping process—to elicit students’ postinstructional understandings about chlorofluorocarbons and their role in global atmospheric change (GAC). A chief criterion measure was accordance, the degree to which students held the ideal postinstructional understanding set forth in a teacher-expert concept map. After GAC instruction that included concept-mapping activities, 34 eighth-grade science students were assigned randomly to groups and completed either POSTICM or POSTI. These students and their teacher also completed relatedness ratings of central concepts from the teacher-expert map. The Knowledge Network Organizing ToolTM was used to transform relatedness ratings to Pathfinder networks and compare nets to yield a student to teacher similarity index (Pathfinder index). Regression analysis revealed that type of interview did not predict accordance. However, most POSTICM students perceived the concept-mapping interview component to be helpful and affect positively their answers to the interview questions. The Pathfinder index did predict (p 5 .003) accordance—the Pathfinder index was a reliable confirmatory measure of the degree to which students held the ideal postinstructional understanding. J Res Sci Teach 35: 521–546,