Abstract:

The first step in preparing pupils to enter and become part of the society is the knowledge of meaningful learning. Teaching pupils how to learn is a prerequisite for their lifelong learning, therefore, teachers should present their pupils a broad spectrum of opportunities as to help them learn efficiently and meaningfully.

The current concept of mediating the learning content in a way that pupils are not able to assess information, interconnect them and find mutual connections is often criticised. Educational process conceived in this way frequently results in misunderstanding of learning content and learning encyclopaedically by memorization applying no critical thinking. One way of learning more efficiently and easily is to use mental maps in educational process.

The subject of the paper are mental maps, their benefits, usage in educational process and impact on pupils’ learning performance. Learning performance is operationalized at factual, conceptual and procedural level of pupils’ knowledge. The aim of the study is to identify the impact of mental maps on quality of pupils’ learning performance. Through a survey, the study identifies and explains the impact of a mental mapping strategy in teaching science on primary education pupils, namely the pupils of the third and fourth grade. The research was designed as a pedagogical experiment based on a pretest and posttest of a sample of 108 pupils divided into an experimental and control group. The research results prove that pupils who apply mental mapping in learning achieve higher level of learning performance.

Keywords:

Mental maps, educational process, learning performance, primary education.