Ian M. Kinchin

Making learning visible: the role of concept mapping in higher education

This article develops the concept‐mapping method as a tool for enhancing teaching quality in higher education. In particular, it describes how concept mapping can be used to transform abstract knowledge and understanding into concrete visual representations that are amenable to comparison and measurement. The article describes four important uses of the method: the identification of prior knowledge (and prior‐knowledge structure) among students; the presentation of new material in ways that facilitate meaningful learning; the sharing of ‘expert’ knowledge and understanding among teachers and learners; and the documentation of knowledge change to show integration of student prior knowledge and teaching. The authors discuss the implications of their approach in the broader context of university level teaching. It is not suggested that university teachers should abandon any of their tried and tested methods of teaching, but it is shown how the quality of what they do can be significantly enhanced by the use of concept mapping.

Concept mapping in biology

Concept mapping is an activity with numerous uses in the biology classroom. Its value in planning, teaching, revision, and assessment, and the attitudes of students and teachers towards its use, are discussed. Comments made are illustrated with excerpts from interviews with teachers and students who were involved in classroom concept mapping exercises. The use of expert maps for scoring is described, and some of the pitfalls are considered. Finally, the value of concept mapping as an aid to reflective practice is discussed.

Using concept maps to reveal conceptual typologies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain and develop a classification of cognitive structures (or typologies of thought), previously designated as spoke, chain and network thinking by Kinchin et al.Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows how concept mapping can be used to reveal these conceptual typologies and endeavours to place the concept‐mapping method in the broader context of learning styles and learning theory.Findings – The findings suggest that spoke structures are indicative of a naive epistemology, or of “learning‐readiness”; chain structures are indicators of “goal‐orientation” and networks are indicators of expertise. Furthermore, change that comprises simple elaboration of existing spokes or chains is likely to be the result of surface learning styles and the emergence of networks indicative of deep learning. The utility of these different cognitive approaches is discussed.Research limitations/implications – The work is limited by the general lack of empirical testing, but the...

Universities as centres of non-learning

It has been claimed that one of the overriding purposes of the scholarship of teaching movement is to make more visible what teachers do to make learning happen. The authors of this article are critical of the literature on the scholarship of teaching for not having made more progress towards this aim. They support these assertions through analysis of recent literature and consultation with academics teaching in a variety of disciplines. The weakness in the prior literature is addressed by a proposal to augment a model of scholarship of teaching by providing a tool that can be used by teachers to make explicit the central concept of pedagogic resonance – the bridge between teacher knowledge and student learning. This bridge, spanning the divide between teacher and student, can be made visible through the application of mapping techniques. However, the application of the concept mapping methodology reveals a strategic learning cycle in which teachers and students appear to be complicit in the avoidance of engagement with the discourse of the discipline. The perceived utility of this strategic cycle may subvert any attempt to develop scholarship in university teaching, and may lead consistently to a non-learning outcome for students and teachers – a phenomenon that has previously been largely ignored.

The myth of the research-led teacher

This paper examines the contention that achievement in research is a prerequisite for effective teaching in higher education. It also explores university level teaching more generally with the purpose of examining the links between teaching and research. Concept mapping, in particular, is described as a means of exploring both the knowledge structures of experts (teachers and researchers) and the cognitive changes that are indicative of meaningful learning among students. We use the approach to suggest that rich and complex networks are indicative of expert status, but that these are seldom made explicit to students in the course of teaching. Instead, simple, linear structures comprise most lesson plans or teaching sequences. This linearity is often made transparent through the lecturers’ use of PowerPoint presentations to structure teaching. Thus the transmission mode of teaching predominates in HE and evidence of authentic research‐led teaching remains scant. This is likely to reinforce surface learning outcomes among university students and be an impediment to the emergence of expert status. The linear chains that are commonly espoused in teaching lend themselves to rote learning strategies rather than to individual meaning making. The approach we describe here has the potential to reinstate expert status as the prime qualification for teaching in higher education. Where concept mapping is used to share and explore knowledge structures between students and experts, then learning can be shown to occur in ways that are synonymous with research and discovery. Using this approach, the teacher–student distinction becomes legitimately blurred so that the sharing and advancement of knowledge are concomitant. In conclusion, we suggest that this is a basis for a pedagogy that is appropriate to HE and distinct from the compulsory sector.

Reconsidering the Dimensions of Expertise: From Linear Stages towards Dual Processing.

This paper explores the developing concept of expertise, taking the Dreyfus and Dreyfus staged model as its starting point. It analyses criticism of the Dreyfus model and considers more recent attempts to resolve the tensions implicit within it. The authors go on to suggest ways some of the later modifications can be improved. The traditional notion of intuition is revisited and thereafter a new and novel way of visualising expertise is presented as a dualprocessing relationship between chains of practice and the underlying networks of understanding. These chain and net knowledge structures have been revealed through the analysis of concept maps produced by numerous cohorts of students and teachers. It is argued that a visualisation of the dynamic relationship between the dimensions of expertise provides an emerging theoretical framework for a more general reappraisal of teaching in higher education. This reconsideration of expertise may be the catalyst for dialogue about educational practice within disciplines (between lecturers and between lecturers and students), and between lecturers and educational developers. This dialogue will strengthen disciplinary communities of practice and place the agenda for pedagogic change within the context of the academic disciplines.

Using Concept Mapping to Enhance the Research Interview

In this paper the authors report the use of concept mapping as a means of summarizing interview transcripts in the study of the information-seeking behavior of employees in an organization. Concept mapping differs from traditional methods of textual coding for interview analysis by making underlying cognitive structures transparent and giving a focus to the sets of propositions by which individuals construct meaning. Concept map structure correlates with the perceived richness of interview data. They provide quick summaries of the interview quality and may help to identify topics for further probing to elicit new information. In this study rich interviews provide complex concept map structures, whereas less successful interviews provide simpler, spoke structures. Issues in using concept maps with research interviews are discussed, including use as a retrospective interview probe, as a check on evidence saturation, as a form of data display or as a form of creative coding.

Exploiting variations in concept map morphology as a lesson-planning tool for trainee teachers in higher education

Abstract Consideration of variations in the gross morphology of concept maps can be helpful in the context of lesson planning by promoting the consideration of the multiple perspectives held by students. The three basic concept map structures are described as having particular utility at different stages of the planning process: (a) chain-type maps emphasise a linear sequence of teaching sessions and are useful for organising lesson materials; (b) spoke-type maps can be helpful to the student by highlighting a knowledge structure that provides a fertile foundation for development, i.e. organising novice understanding; (c) net-type maps can demonstrate a deep understanding as held by the subject-specialist teacher and therefore illustrate expert knowledge structures to which students should aspire. Consideration of a teaching topic as depicted by a variety of map structures may help the ‘subject-expert novice-teacher’ to view the topic through the eyes of the subject-novice (student) and so increase the po...

Visualising expertise: towards an authentic pedagogy for higher education

The development of expertise is seen as a crucial element in higher education, but the nature of expertise has been clouded by assumptions of the centrality of intuition and tacit knowledge. In this paper the authors contend that much knowledge that has been described as tacit can be surfaced for examination through the application of concept mapping techniques. This approach allows experts to articulate their practice in a way that is transparent, making it available for scrutiny by students. Expertise is described here as connecting the chains of practice that denote competence with the underlying networks of understanding that are required to support academic development. This occurs across the academic disciplines with various degrees of subtlety. It is described in the context of clinical teaching as it is in this context that the separation of chains of practice from underlying networks of understanding is most pronounced.

Avoiding technology-enhanced non-learning

Introduction The inclusion of digital technology into university teaching is now taken for granted as part of the landscape of higher education. Whilst there is enormous enthusiasm for the application of technology-enhanced learning (and considerable sums of money currently being spent on TEL initiatives), it is also clear from the literature that there has not been universal satisfaction in the past with the progress that has been made to integrate new technologies into teaching. This dissatisfaction has been due to the manner in which technological innovation has sometimes been introduced, or due to perceived barriers to the adoption of technology into existing teaching environments.