The Development of Students' Conceptual Structures of Environmental Knowledge

Author: Tzuchau Chang (Graduate Institute of Environmental Education, National Taiwan Normal University), K.J. Yang (Graduate Institute of Environmental Education, National Taiwan Normal University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 42 (New Version)
Date：October 1997
Pages：31-48
DOI：10.6300/JNTNU.1997.42.03

Abstract：

The purpose of this study was to investigate and contrast junior high school and high school students' conceptual structures of environmental knowledge. Concept mapping and multidimensional scaling were involved in this study to investigate the students' conceptual structures of environmental knowledge. The role of concept mapping was to externalize students' cognitive understanding of environmental issues. A concept map could show the concepts, the relationships among these concepts and the structure consisting of the concepts and the linking words of a student who drew it. The concepts on students' maps representing their subject matter of knowledge were used as stimulus variables for multidimensional scaling analysis. The links among concepts on their maps indicated the degree of proximity and were counted to form a dissimilarity matrix. Then, the dissimilarity matrices were transformed to geographical distance scales by multidimensional scaling. Finally, the ideas of cluster analysis and concept mapping were applied to classify these concept points into different clusters. These clusters showed the underlying structure of a group students' environmental concepts. In order to understand students' conceptual structures of environmental knowledge, this study asked students to draw concept maps to represent their understanding of three topics: air, water, and global village, and then discussed the concepts they used and how these concepts were organized. The research design of this study included: (1) Using concept mapping to externalize students' understanding of environmental knowledge; (2) Applying multidimensional scaling to quantify the proximity among their environmental concepts; (3) Applying the ideas of cluster analysis and concept mapping to explore the constructs of their environmental knowledge; and (4) Contrasting the differences of the concepts and MDS results of the junior high and high school students. The result showed seventh graders' and tenth graders' conceptual struc-tures of their environmental knowledge.

Keywords：Conceptual structure, Concept mapping, Multidimensional scaling

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