Stephanie Wehry, Heather Monroe-Ossi, Sharon Cobb, and Cheryl Fountain

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Concept Mapping Strategies: Content, Tools and
Assessment for Human Geography
St ephanie Wehry
a

a

, Heat her Monroe-Ossi

a

, Sharon Cobb

b

& Cheryl Fount ain

a

Florida Inst it ut e of Educat ion , Universit y of Nort h Florida , Jacksonville , Florida , USA

b

Depart ment of Economics and Geography, Coggin College of Business , Universit y of Nort h
Florida , Jacksonville , Florida , USA
Published online: 22 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: St ephanie Wehry , Heat her Monroe-Ossi , Sharon Cobb & Cheryl Fount ain (2012) Concept
Mapping St rat egies: Cont ent , Tools and Assessment f or Human Geography, Journal of Geography, 111: 3, 83-92, DOI:
10. 1080/ 00221341. 2011. 604094
To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 00221341. 2011. 604094

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Concept Mapping Strategies: Content, Tools and Assessment for
Human Geography

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Stephanie Wehry, Heather Monroe-Ossi, Sharon Cobb, and Cheryl Fountain

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

This article examines the use of concept
mapping for formative and summative
assessment of northeast Florida middle
school students’ knowledge of human
geography. The students were participants
in an afterschool, academic, college reach-out
program that provided opportunities to test
concept mapping strategies that support
spatial thinking and stimulate interest in
human geography. The study documents the
use of concept mapping for assessment of
seventh graders’ achievement of a specific
lesson and for students’ human geography

achievement across all implementation grades.
Concept mapping results provided insight
into aspects of the curriculum and instruction
where appropriate modifications could better
facilitate meaningful learning.

Graphic representations such as charts, maps, still photographic images, videos,
and GIS (geographic information system) output are some of the major tools that
geographers use to document and analyze the distribution of human activities.
We suggest that concept maps, used to visually represent knowledge, are tools
that teachers can use to assess student learning. Learners build knowledge by
making a growing network of connections among concepts, and concept maps
(nonlinguistic, hierarchical diagrams) systematically show these connections.
The overall purpose of this project was to explore the use of concept mapping
for formative and summative assessments of the human geography knowledge of
middle school students participating in an afterschool, college reach-out program,
PreCollegiate Connections: College Reach-Out Program (CROP). College reachout programs are a response to the national focus on increasing the number of
economically disadvantaged students who enroll in and complete postsecondary
education. These students frequently become the first generation in their families
to do so. The academic content of CROP is focused on human geography—a choice

prompted by the offering of Advance Placement Human Geography (APHG)1
beginning in the ninth grade in district high schools. A CROP goal is to stimulate
participating students’ interest in human geography in hopes of motivating them
to enroll and to be successful in APHG.
We believed that concept mapping could be used to explicitly teach connections
among topics and to measure students’ understandings. Because we believe
curriculum design is an evolving process, we hoped to use results from the
concept mapping assessments to revise the geography curriculum in ways that
better prepare middle school students for higher level thinking activities, increase
their problem solving skills, and quantify their human geography achievement.
In the next section, we document previous literature addressing the state of K–12
geography in the United States, describe the context of CROP, and delineate
the uses of concept mapping in educational settings. We then describe and
analyze the process for and design of concept maps used to assess middle school
geography knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of using concept mapping
for assessment and present additional thoughts for future work.

Key Words: AP Human Geography,
assessment, geographic education, concept
mapping, urban education

Stephanie Wehry, Ph.D., is Assistant Director for
Research and Evaluation at the Florida Institute of
Education located at the University of North Florida,
Jacksonville, Florida, USA. Her research interests
include concept mapping, research methodology,
evaluation, and measurement.
Heather Monroe-Ossi, doctoral student, is a curriculum research associate at the Florida Institute of
Education located at the University of North Florida,
Jacksonville, Florida, USA. Her research interests
include concept mapping, instructional technology,
curriculum development, and evaluation.
Sharon Cobb, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the
Department of Economics and Geography, Coggin
College of Business, University of North Florida,
Jacksonville, Florida, USA. Her research interests
include financial geographies, business GIS and
geography education.
Cheryl Fountain, Ed.D, is Executive Director of
the Florida Institute of Education located at the

University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida,
USA. Her research interests include underserved
populations, instructional design, evaluation research, and concept mapping applications.

BACKGROUND
Geography is “the art/science that deals with where things are located, why
they are located there, and what difference their location makes” (Gersmehl
2008, 3). Unfortunately, many students are geographically illiterate (Grosvenor
1985, 1995). Several efforts to reverse this state have been met with varying
degrees of success; these efforts would include the work of the Geography
Education National Implementation Project (a consortium including the National
Council for Geographic Education, the Association of American Geographers,
the National Geographic Society, and the American Geographical Society) among
others. While the development of national geography standards (Geography
Education Standards Project 1994) were a positive part of this project, local and
state implementation of the standards is voluntary and often perfunctory.
In Florida, Department of Education (FLDOE) staff established detailed
benchmarks for geography in 1998, and updated them as Next Generation Sunshine
State Standards in 2008 (FLDOE 2008). Geography instruction and curriculum
development in Florida is now linked in grades K–12 using a database of 139

Journal of Geography 111: 83–92


C 2012 National Council for Geographic Education

83

Wehry et al.

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benchmarks. At the local level, course offerings include
Florida Studies in the fourth grade and a geography course
in the seventh grade. Over the past decade, the development and implementation of APHG has breathed new
life into teaching geography for many students, teachers,
schools, and school districts. Florida students, like others
across the country, are able to take the course as an elective.
CROP
CROP design and implementation began in the 2007–
2008 academic year and, by the third year of implementation, researchers completed the design work and

implemented CROP across all three middle school grades.
CROP participants attended two low-performing middle
schools in the urban core of a large Florida city. A
combination of several factors including below gradelevel achievement on either or both of the state reading
and mathematics accountability measures, poverty-status
(eligibility for the free or reduced-priced lunch), and the
potential for being a member of the first generation in their
family to complete college determines whether students
are eligible to participate in CROP. During the 2009–2010
academic year seventy-four, seventy, and fifty-eight CROP
students participated in the sixth, seventh, and eighth
grades, respectively.
More often than not, CROP students have social or
academic barriers or both to overcome and as a result
are reluctant learners—often lacking the motivation to
sustain sufficient effort necessary for academic success.
Therefore, afterschool weekly learning sessions focused
on building students’ human geography knowledge and
improving their self-esteem. Learning excursions and a
five-day nonresidential summer ecological camp extended

the afterschool curriculum, which included technology-rich
activities and college-student mentors. The CROP initiative
incorporated academic and social support for students
and occurred weekly in three-hour sessions led by middle
school teachers and undergraduate college students. The
purpose of CROP was to build a community of students
who see themselves as academically able, emotionally
ready, and active in their pursuit of positive futures in
middle school, high school, and postsecondary education.
Weekly learning sessions included a teacher-led ninetyminute lesson that provided the human geography content
necessary to complete the day’s activities (small-group and
individual work) facilitated by the college students. In the
learning sessions, teachers used concept mapping as an
instructional strategy and students used concept mapping
as graphic organizers. Concept mapping provided an
innovative strategy supportive of CROP goals because
teachers rarely used concept mapping strategies during the
traditional school day.
Concept Mapping
Novak characterized learning as an active process

that involves acquiring, creating, and using knowledge
84

(e.g., Novak and Gowin 1984; Novak 1998). Furthermore,
the dual-coding theory of knowledge storage posits
that humans store knowledge in two ways—linguistic
and nonlinguistic (imagery) forms (Paivio 1990; Sadoski
and Paivio 2001). Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock
(2001) found that students who used both ways to store
information were better able to recall and apply knowledge.
Concept maps are nonlinguistic, two-dimensional, hierarchical diagrams that result from systematically mapping
the relationships among concepts, and their use helps
individuals visualize the structure of the mapped knowl˜ (2008) noted that on concept maps
edge. Novak and Canas
directional lines with words articulating the relationship
between the concepts connect related concepts. Linked
concepts form propositions and, when read, propositions
form meaningful statements. Cross-linked propositions
link concepts across different map segments. Novak and
˜ contended that the two features of concept maps
Canas
that indicate leaps of creative thinking are the hierarchical
structure of the map and the use of cross-links (see Fig. 1
for an example of a concept map).
Education researchers have long seen concept mapping
as a powerful tool to promote meaningful learning (e.g.,
Novak and Gowin 1984; Novak 1990, 1998; Kinchin and
˜ 2008). In their 2003 report to
Hay 2000; Novak and Canas
the Chief of Naval Education and Training, researchers at
the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC)
broadly summarized the uses of concept mapping in
educational settings as support for learning, assessment
of learning, and for the organization and presentation
of knowledge. Support of learning applications included
schematic summaries of what students know, displays
of students’ prior knowledge, summaries of what has
been learned, and detection of misconceptions. Assessment
applications of concept mapping included formative and
summative assessments and the documentation of changes
in students’ conceptual knowledge. Teachers use concept
maps as advance organizers to scaffold learning and present
knowledge for course and curriculum development. Teachers use classroom concept maps, constructed by teachers or
other experts, to present a global overview at the beginning
of a unit and also to scaffold learning throughout the unit
(IHMC 2003).
Connect to Knowledge (Con´ectate al Conocimiento) is the
primary component of a Panamanian strategy, Intelligent
Panama (Panam´a Inteligente), implemented in 2005 in
Panamanian schools. Through Connect to Knowledge the
government plans to facilitate a change in school focus from
rote memorization of facts to a system in which children
develop the necessary skills to construct knowledge contextualized by the interconnectedness of ideas (United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) 2010). In an address at
the Third International Conference on Concept Mapping,
Secretary Tart´e (2006) described the professional learning
that teachers received to facilitate meaningful learning
through the use of concept mapping—the main focus of
Connect to Knowledge. Tart´e reported that the private

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Concept Mapping Strategies: Content, Tools and Assessment for Human Geography

information, but that over time the
general population has come to
consider the use of maps an important skill. Skills essential for the
twenty-first century include spatial
thinking, the skill underlying the
construction and use of maps. Bednarz further suggested that graphics such as concept maps facilitate
thinking with space. The construction of concept maps forces mappers to move nonspatial information into spatial forms and their
use requires interpretation of spatial representations. Both actions
facilitate spatial thinking.
Trygestad (1997) investigated
how students at the sixth, ninth,
and twelfth grades conceptualized
geography. She analyzed the relationships between prior academic
achievement, grade level, the identification and use of geography
Figure 1. The master concept map for the seventh grade landmarks lesson. The
concepts, and the complexity of
concept map also provides an example of the scoring system.
constructed concept maps. Students sorted a list of twenty-five
sector, the Panamanian government, and the Gabriel
salient geography concepts as familiar and unfamiliar and
Lewis Galindo Foundation supported the initiative from
then created concept maps using the familiar concepts.
its inception. UNDP supported the operational structure.
Study results indicated that the complexity of the concept
Other countries implemented similar educational strategies
maps increased with grade level and achievement. Of
involving a focus on meaningful learning and concept
particular interest is Trygestad’s summarizing statement,
mapping, but Panama is the first country to implement
in which she said,
concept mapping at the national level. Between 2005 and
Concept maps were considered valuable
2008, 6,000 teachers in 734 schools received training in
by most students. They felt concept maps
concept mapping strategies (UNDP 2010).
were visual models that organized and
The National Assessment Governing Board of the U.S.
replicated their thinking. As a tool for
Department of Education (NAGB) in Framework for the
clarification, concept mapping was a help2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP],
ful metacognitive strategy. Through their
identified concept mapping as a format for constructed
brief encounter with concepts and concept
response items and as one of four possible item formats for
maps, students responded positively and
use in interactive computer tasks. NAGB members strongly
suggested continued emphasis on them in
recommended that at least one concept mapping item be
the classroom. Although students may have
included in the eighth and twelfth grade NAEP science
been challenged by the process of concept
measures (NAGB 2008).
identification and use, they tended to find
Uses of concept mapping in geography classrooms
the conceptual orientation helpful and map
include support for student learning and for assessment.
construction valuable to understand geog˚
For instance, as reported by Ahlberg
and Ahoranta (2002),
raphy. (Trygestad 1997, 15–16)
Rikkinen, in her Finnish geography methods text, offers
˚
concept mapping as a method for teaching geographical
Ahlberg
and Ahoranta (2002) reported the results of a
content. Witherick et al. (1998), in a study guide for A-level
multiple case study of concept mapping in a geography
geography, suggested that concept mapping encourages
learning project using ten- to twelve-year-old Finnish stuclarification of complex interconnected content and allows
dents. The students, three high-, three average-, and three
teachers to monitor students’ understanding. The authors
low-achievers, constructed concept maps at the beginning
provided examples of concept-mapped geography content.
and end of the project. Their results included two types of
Furthermore, Bednarz (2011), in her essay linking maps,
concept map scores: one calculated by adding the number
spatial thinking skills, and APHG, stated that geographers
of relevant concepts and the other by adding the number of
traditionally have used maps to display and communicate
relevant propositions. Almost all of the students obtained
85

Wehry et al.

higher scores at the end of the project. Additionally,
students’ maps began to show a hierarchy suggesting that
student learning was becoming increasingly connected and
ordered.

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ASSESSMENT DECISIONS AND RESULTS
Concept Mapping and Assessment
Novak (1990) suggested four primary uses for concept
mapping: learning, instruction, planning, and assessment
of student learning. However, the primary focus of this article lies in using concept mapping for assessment of student
learning. When developing concept mapping strategies
for assessments, teachers and researchers make decisions
about three assessment-related facets of concept mapping:
the task for the respondent, the format of the response,
and a scoring system that produces reliable and valid
results. Concept mapping tasks that do not constrain the
responder have the highest validity for measuring student
knowledge, but at the same time take longer to construct
and more cognitive effort to produce. Thus, when using
concept mapping for assessment, developers must weigh
the potential tradeoffs between efficiency (the time required
to produce a concept map and the cognitive demand
placed on responders) and validity (the degree to which
the assessment measures the intended construct) resulting
from their decisions (Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson 1996).
Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson (1996) provided three ways
that concept mapping tasks draw out students’ knowledge:
task demands, constraints, and structure. Task demands
for students range from the heavy cognitive demand of
student-generated concept maps, the gold standard, to the
more moderate demands of fill-in type concept maps. Task
constraints involve restrictions imposed on the task. For
instance, students may be supplied a list of concepts to
use, asked to construct an hierarchical map, supplied a list
of linking phrases, or provided a map structure to fill in.
The structure of the task results from combining the task
demands and the constraints. Researchers have proposed
and studied numerous concept map scoring systems, with
most systems building on the work of Novak and Gowin
(1984) in which propositions, cross-links, and the concept
map’s hierarchical structure receive scores. However, at this
point there is no universally recommended scoring system,
and researchers continue to develop and study scoring
systems in efforts to quantify the structure of knowledge
and to automate the use of scoring systems.
The CROP investigations involved the use of concept
mapping for formative and summative assessments of the
students’ geography knowledge. The formative assessment
involved the use of a master concept map, developed by the
teacher/researcher, to scaffold the learning of the seventh
graders (Fig. 1). At the end of the lesson the students’ task
was to generate concept maps by incorporating concepts
from the master concept map and adding the newly learned
concepts. The design of the summative assessment was
to assess the human geography learning across all three
86

grades at the end of the academic year. We present the
decisions involved in designing the summative assessment
and results of a field test of the draft instrument.
Formative Assessment Study
The formative assessment study occurred in spring
2010, following eighteen weeks of afterschool sessions. A
researcher (familiar with students), teachers, and college
students led all study activities. The human geography
curriculum varied by grade and the following example
outlines the instructional processes used with seventh
graders. The lesson, a content summary of a previous
session about landmarks, included mostly fact-based,
declarative knowledge. The teacher/researcher reviewed
concept mapping vocabulary and activated students’ prior
geography knowledge by reviewing the previous lesson.
The teacher/researcher then modeled the creation of the
concept map shown in Figure 1; however, most students
had prior experience with concept mapping.
The teacher/researcher provided students with chart
paper containing the focus question “What have I learned
about landmarks?”, the sixteen concepts used on the
seventh-grade master map (see Fig. 1), four new concepts
(Mount Rushmore, Mount St. Helens, the Great Smokey
Mountains, and the Statue of Liberty) from the landmarks
unit, six blank Post-It Notes for additional concepts, twenty
index cards for linking phrases, a glue stick, and a pencil.
Students worked independently on their concept maps
for about forty minutes with college students monitoring
the activity and probing middle school students about the
connections on their maps.
The research team scored the student-generated maps
(n = 26) using the scoring system developed by Wehry et al.
(2008), which is an adaptation of a system developed by Novak and Gowin (1984). The scoring system provides scores
for the three concept map components and a composite
concept map score that is the sum of the component scores.
To address the complexity of the knowledge structure
mapped, we differentially scored the quality of the propositions (e.g., McClure and Bell 1990; Yin et al. 2005). In doing
so, we increased the threshold for awarding cross-link and
hierarchy level scores—the concept map components that
often reflect creative thinking. Propositions received zero
points if incorrect or irrelevant; one point if correct but
somewhat relevant; two points if correct and relevant;
and three points if causative. Cross-linked propositions
received five points when they linked concepts that are part
of a proposition awarded at least two points; otherwise,
cross-linked propositions scored as any other proposition.
Hierarchy level one, the focal concept, received no points.
Hierarchy level two received five points when three or more
concepts form quality propositions with the focal concept.
(See the master concept map in Fig. 1, which was scored
using the described scoring system.) In Fig. 1, propositions
scored one are correct but provide examples that score one
point. Because the lesson involved declarative knowledge,
many of the propositions are this type.

Concept Mapping Strategies: Content, Tools and Assessment for Human Geography

Table 1. Comparing the attributes of the student-generated and
master landmarks lesson concept maps.
Number

Score

Con Prop Level New Cons Prop CL Level Total
Master 16.0 20.0
Student 14.2 14.3

3.0
2.8

–
2.2

26.0 5.0
20.0 1.9

0.0
0.8

31.0
22.6

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Note: Con is concept, Prop is propositions, and CL is cross-links.

The seventh graders’ average concept maps scores as well
as the average number of concepts, propositions, levels,
and new concepts used on the students’ concept maps
allow a comparison to the master concept map (Table 1).
The analyses indicated that participants were able to create
concept maps with a hierarchal structure and to organize
propositions in a connected way. Seventy-three percent of
the participants included concepts not found on the master
map. On average, students were able to organize content
using a hierarchical order of at least two levels, and 62
percent used three or more levels. The average cross-link
score was 1.9 resulting from 23 percent of the concept maps
exhibiting at least one scored cross-link.
Summative Assessment Study
CROP students have had numerous experiences with
high-stakes, accountability assessments, and the students
have not necessarily enjoyed positive outcomes. Furthermore, CROP participation was voluntary, and students
frequently chose CROP participation over competitive,
less academically focused afterschool programs. Thus it
was in everyone’s best interest that we evaluated the
CROP students’ human geography knowledge using novel
methods that they saw as pleasant activities rather than as
another high-stakes test. We planned to use the developed
instrument across all three grades; therefore, we expected
differentiated outcomes. Our first step was to select a concept mapping format among numerous available formats.
Ruiz-Primo, Schultz et al. (2001) studied the validity of
three types of concept maps frequently used for assessing
science achievement: construct-a-map with a concept list
provided and two types of fill-in concept maps. The
creation of select-and-fill-in (SAFI) formats involves two
steps; the first is the creation of a master map by an
expert, often the teacher. Then, the expert omits some
or all of the concepts or linking phrases. The student’s
task is to fill in what is omitted from the concept map
by making appropriate selections from a list of concepts
or linking phrases. Both types of fill-in concept maps
studied by Ruis-Primo, Schultz et al. began with expert
concept maps. In the first type, concept map developers
removed some of the concepts from the expert map and
placed them in a concept bank for students to use when

completing the fill-in task. In the second type, concept
map developers removed some of the linking phrases and
placed them in a linking-phrase bank. The provision of
twenty concepts was all that constrained the construct-amap task. Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson et al. (2001) used thinkaloud techniques (activities in which respondents think out
loud as they perform specified concept mapping tasks) to
gain insight into the cognitive activities that students used
to complete the concept mapping tasks. Researchers concluded that low-constrained construct-a-map tasks allow
students more opportunity to use conceptual knowledge
to complete the task while more-constrained fill-in maps
encourage students to closely monitor the accuracy of their
responses.
Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson et al. (2001, 125) also evaluated
concept mapping tasks across proficiency groups. They
reported that a higher percentage of low-performing students used monitoring activities than did high-performing
students, and when low-performing students completed
construct-a-map tasks, “The low-performing student read
all the concepts, selected one with no apparent justification
for doing so, and started drawing the map.”
Schau et al. (2001) provided detailed research on the
development and use of fill-in concept map formats. They
developed and evaluated twenty-two different fill-in-type
maps. In the final part of the study, they used a SAFI concept
map format with up to 50 percent of the nonconsecutive
concepts removed. Field testing resulted in a final version
with 36 percent of the 105 concepts removed. Scores on
this SAFI concept map, reflecting the percent of correct
responses, resulted in a Cronbach’s alpha of .94.
After reviewing the work of Ruiz-Primo and her colleagues (Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson 1996; Ruiz-Primo,
Schultz et al. 2001; Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson et al. 2001) and
Schau and her colleagues (Schau and Mattern 1997; Schau
et al. 2001), we developed a SAFI concept map similar to
the one developed and tested by Schau et al. We agreed
with Schau and Mattern that the task in student-generated
concept maps could potentially place a high cognitive
demand on low-achieving students. Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson
et al. also reported think aloud findings indicating that lowperforming students did not develop strategies to complete
construct-a-map tasks; rather they began the task seemingly
at random. We thought that the use of monitoring activities
in performing fill-in concept mapping tasks was a positive
outcome especially when the activities lead to effective
reflection, inspection, and development of task completion
strategies.
The design of the CROP curriculum resulted in the
creation of a table of curriculum specification for each grade.
The curriculum specification tables included detailed information concerning what students should know and be able
to do after experiencing the curriculum. The first step in the
creation of the master concept map was to use the tables of
specification to identify the concepts that students should
know at each grade. In looking at the identified concepts,
we recognized that the curriculum was designed from the
87

Wehry et al.

activities. The sample of twentynine girls and fourteen boys included twenty-three, thirteen, and
seven sixth, seventh and eighth
graders, respectively. We analyzed
Grade
All
6th
7th
8th
student responses, coded 1 for correct responses and 0 for incorrect
Items
responses to determine item (omitCompass Rose
6
.88
.96
.77
.86
ted concept) difficulty, item differ.22
.31
.43
Outside Influences
6
.28
Behaviors
6
.49
.52
.31
.71
entiation by grade, and Cronbach’s
.46
.29
Family Traditions
6
.30
.22
alpha (Table 2).
Rivers
7
.86
.87
.85
.86
Across all grades, the SAFI map
Beaches
7
.84
.78
.92
.86
exhibited an acceptable coefficient
Flora
7
.93
1.00
.77
1.00
of internal consistency, .84, and
Fauna
7
.91
.91
.85
1.00
only one concept (outside influences
St. Augustine
7
.61
.65
.39
.86
from the sixth grade) was difficult
Mayors
7
.67
.65
.77
.57
with an estimated mean of .28.
Revenue
7
.67
.65
.62
.86
(Because the mean of dichotomous
Congressional Representative
7
.35
.30
.46
.29
items represents the proportion of
Migrant Workers
7
.63
.70
.46
.71
correct responses it simultaneously
Landmarks
7&8
.61
.65
.46
.71
Flags
8
.65
.74
.46
.71
represents item difficulty.) CronInternational Peace
8
.58
.57
.54
.71
bach’s alpha by the grade level of
New York City
8
.63
.65
.46
.86
the items ranged from an unacUnderdeveloped Country
8
.49
.39
.54
.71
ceptable .36 for the sixth grade to
Death Rate
8
.93
.96
.85
1.00
an acceptable high of .83 for the
GDP
8
.47
.39
.31
1.00
seventh grade.
Total Score
All
63.84
63.91
57.69
75.00
More than 90 percent of the stu.83†
.73‡
Coefficient Alpha
.84
.36∗
dents correctly used three concepts
Note: Bolded values represent very easy concepts (mean > .90) and italicized underlined values
(two from the seventh-grade currepresent difficult concepts (mean < 30). ∗ indicates that only omitted concepts specified for the sixthriculum and one from the eighthgrade curriculum (4) were used in calculations; † indicates that only omitted concept. specified for the
grade curriculum). Analysis of
seventh-grade curriculum (10) were used in calculations; and ‡ indicates that only omitted concepts
SAFI items by grade indicated
specified for the eighth-grade curriculum (7) were used in calculations.
that the sixth graders struggled
with concepts from the sixth-grade
bottom-up starting at the sixth grade with self, family, and
curriculum while they found concepts from the seventhneighborhood. By the eighth grade, the curriculum had
and eighth-grade curricula only moderately difficult. The
expanded to the more global concepts of nation states. The
seventh graders somewhat struggled with the sixth-grade
identified concepts led to internal discussions of the big
concepts but found most of the seventh-grade concepts
ideas of human geography—the big ideas that form the
moderately difficult. All eighth graders correctly used four
first levels of a top-down hierarchical map and that were
concepts, two from the seventh-grade curriculum and two
missing from the list of concepts.
from the eighth-grade curriculum.
A university research team (comprised of educational
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
researchers and a colleague from the Department of
The growth of the program, in part, documents the
Economics and Geography) worked together to create the
success of CROP. Eighty-seven eighth graders participated
expert map. The first step in constructing the expert map
during the 2010–2011 academic year in contrast to fiftywas the incorporation of the big ideas (places, culture,
eight during the 2009–2010 academic year. Additionally,
economic production, and change) using terms that the
of the twenty-two CROP students enrolled in district high
CROP students would understand. The draft of an expert
schools in fall 2010, fifteen attended high schools offering
SAFI geography map contained seventy-two concepts and,
APHG. Among these students, nine enrolled in APHG.
in keeping with the concept map developed by Schau et al.
Our discussion centers on what we learned from the
(2001), consecutive concepts were not removed. Most of the
students’ concept maps and how that knowledge can
omitted concepts were lower in the concept hierarchy, thus
inform program improvement. In both studies, concept
located at the bottom of the map. Figure 2 is the field-tested
mapping provided insights into curricular and instrucversion of the SAFI map.
tional deficits and gaps in student learning. The concept
During the first week of May 2010 forty-three CROP
maps developed by the seventh graders, on average,
students agreed to field test the SAFI concept map by
were not as complex as we expected. However, some
completing the SAFI map as part of their routine afterschool

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Table 2. SAFI concept map item means and Cronbach’s alpha for the total score and by
grade.

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Concept Mapping Strategies: Content, Tools and Assessment for Human Geography

89

Figure 2. SAFI human geography concept map and missing concept bank.

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Wehry et al.

student-constructed maps were more complex than the
expert map. Two possible explanations provide insight into
the students’ maps and our instructional procedures. In
previous learning sessions, the students generated concept maps using a computer-based program, CmapTools
(available for download at http://cmap.ihmc.us/), which
automatically provides the linking structure of the concept
map as new concepts are added and linked. (Concept
maps displayed in Figs. 1 and 2 were generated using
CmapTools.) Student use of pencil, paper, and glue rather
than CmapTools in the formative assessment may have
constrained map generation—some students ran out of
paper space to complete their maps, some forgot to use
directional arrows on the connecting lines, some forgot to
use linking phrases on the directional lines, and others did
any combination of the listed difficulties. If students had
used CmapTools, it may have been more difficult for them
to overlook these concept map features.
Additionally, the CROP nontraditional, academic
environment—a less-constrained environment that often
promotes creativity—may, in part, explain the lower-thanexpected student concept map scores. Many students, in
constructing their maps, did not use the master map as
a guide in placing concepts on their maps. Instead, they
freely mapped the concepts relative to their experiences
and understanding. This outcome was also unexpected as
we thought the students would simply add new concepts to
the existing structure. However, while the students’ concept
map scores were lower because of their approach to the
task, their concept maps provided information about their
conceptual understanding of the landmarks lesson.
Grade-specific analysis of the students’ responses to the
SAFI concept map field test (Table 2) point to the need
to rethink the selection of which sixth-grade concepts to
omit from the map and place in the concept bank. Of the
four concepts selected for omission, two were difficult for
the sixth graders; furthermore, the four missing concepts
represented some of the most difficult items across all
grades. In contrast, the omitted seventh-grade concepts
presented little difficulty for the sixth graders. Thus, the
resulting SAFI scores did not differentiate between the sixth
and seventh graders as expected.
Because we have evidence indicating growth in CROP
participation and our first group of participants entering
high school enrolled in APHG, we want to carefully
revise some aspects of CROP without negatively impacting
aspects contributing to program success. In general, the
sixth-grade concepts are the most abstract of the SAFI concepts. However, the sixth-grade curriculum was specifically
designed to help students understand that they control their
own path to academic success. To achieve the CROP goal
of building a community of students who see themselves
as academically able, emotionally ready, and active in
their pursuit of positive futures in middle school, high
school, and postsecondary education, students must first
see themselves in charge of their futures. To that end, the
CROP geography curriculum begins in the sixth grade at
90

the small, local end of the scale continuum with self, family,
friends, and community.
In the future, the researchers will revise the existing sixthgrade curriculum to more explicitly connect the concepts
surrounding self-concept to the foundational concepts of
human geography. Additionally, teachers could reinforce
sixth-grade students’ learning by using a concept mapping
formative assessment lesson similar to that described for
the seventh-grade implementation. SAFI results indicated
that the seventh grade concepts were among the easiest
concepts across the three grades. This finding suggests
that we revisit the seventh grade curriculum to provide
more focus on application of the content in ways that
build connections to the foundational concepts of human
geography. In fact, during summer 2011, guided in part
by these assessment results, we revised the seventh grade
curriculum by incorporating a wider variety of technology
and by strengthening the alignment of the curriculum with
human-environment interaction, region, and movement.
This new curriculum draws more from human geography
rather than physical geography, which is offered to seventhgrade students during the school day.
In summary, our investigation indicated that teachers and
researchers can use concept mapping for formative and
summative assessment in an urban, afterschool program.
The students willingly completed the student-generated
and SAFI concept maps. Their concept maps provided
insight into the structure of their geography knowledge and
helped us identify strengths and weaknesses of the CROP
human geography curriculum.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The PreCollegiate Connections: College Reach-Out Program is made possible by funding provided by the University of North Florida, Division of Academic Affairs; the
Florida Institute of Education at the University of North
Florida; and the Florida Department of Education Bureau
of School Improvement.

NOTE
1. The Advanced Placement (AP) program is a widely
recognized program of the College Board. Advanced
Placement Human Geography (APHG) is one of the
courses offered to high school students through the
AP program and, through participation, students
have the opportunity to earn college credit.

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