Abstract:

The correct use and understanding of concepts is essential for learning natural sciences. Misunderstandings of concepts has negative impact for the future learning process. Today`s modern biology is composed of many sub-disciplines and therefore it is important to motivate students to learn concepts in real life context.

Active learning is a method that keeps students mentally and physically active so that the knowledge acquisition comes through participating and contributing to the process. The use of active learning programs might be one way to overcome the difficulties of learning of natural sciences. The use of active learning programs in combination with new learning and assessment methods like concept mapping could be organised in the way that makes learning more relevant for students.

Nowadays more attention has been paid for students’ cognitive development and meaningful learning, but we still need research instruments for evaluating the cognitive learning process. Concept mapping is widely used learning and assessment method for decades. It is developed for practice and examining students’ meaningful learning and cognitive development. Many teacher and scientist are using it to help students to learn and to assess their knowledge. While using concept mapping for knowledge assessment, the concept maps are analysed in quantitative and qualitative ways. In most cases the learning achievement has been seen as the increase in number of concepts and propositions.

The aim of the study is to prove the statement, that learning achievement could also be seen as decrease of misconceptions. To get the information about students’ knowledge acquisition during active learning programs we evaluated active learning programs by using the concept mapping method. In the study 414 concept maps from 207 basic school students were collected before and after the participation of the active learning programs (ALPs). About 7708 propositions were assessed and rated in three-point system. In addition to usual quantitative characteristics of concept maps, the new index, Proposition Quality Index (PQI), was defined. While usually correct propositions and centrality of key concepts are assessed, this index pays more attention to analyse the misconceptions.

The results showed that active learning programs helped students to acquire new knowledge and to reduce significantly misconceptions. By some topics the decrease of misconceptions was higher than the increase of new correct propositions. Therefore, it can be assumed that in some cases the most important learning will take part in decreasing and changing the misconceptions.

Keywords:

Science education, assessment, concept mapping, active learning program.