Abstract:

Concept maps create opportunities for students to show meaningful relationships between concepts taught in Geography. They are concise representations of the conceptual structures that favor the learning of these structures. However, unlike other didactic materials, concept maps are not self-instructive and depend on the teachers teaching position towards collaborative learning and, therefore, are more meaningful for students. Their use also depends on the familiarity that students have with both content to be learned and with digital applications such as CmapTools. It is a strategy appropriate to the paradigm shift from traditional assessment to qualitative and formative learning processes, so that they are potentially meaningful and allow for the integration of reconciliation and differentiation of concept meanings. Its rationale is based on David Ausubel’s cognitive learning theory. It is a technique developed in the mid-seventies by Joseph Novak and his colleagues at Cornell University in the United States. In this article, we present the results of research carried out on the teaching and learning of geographic concepts with 38 students of a high school in Brazil. Initially the students individually created the concept maps on paper before presenting the key concepts to the teacher. Subsequently, they were subdivided into pairs. The CmapTools application, in a collaborative way, created the opportunity to create a new concept map that was analyzed and peer-reviewed. The results showed significantly improved conceptual quality maps than when constructed individually, thus indicating more meaningful and profound conceptual understanding.

Keywords:

Teaching geography, concept maps, CmapTools, collaborative learning.