The effectiveness of concept map application on identifying students' misconceptions of graphical literacy

The concept map becomes meaningful with the connection between the new concepts and the existing concepts in the cognitive structure. Using the concept map, the learners combine the contents and realize the internal connection between the concepts. In this sense, statistics is important as they help people interpret important information. The purpose of the effectiveness of the concept map is to identify misconceptions in the field of mathematics education from graphic literacy. The current research method is an interpretation of two quantitative and qualitative methods. The statistical population was all preservice mathematics teachers (PMT), 18 undergraduate PMTs and 15 master's PMTs were selected as the purposive sample. The PMTs of each level were divided into three groups. The PMTs of the first group completed the concept map and then answer the questions of the written exam and the second group first answer the questions of the written exam and then completed the concept map and the third group only answer the questions of the written exam. The PMTs of group 1 and 2 did not have the opportunity to return to the exam questions they did first and correct their answers. In order to evaluate the effect of using concept maps on PMTs' learning, all PMTs of the three groups answered one question called the total exam. To analyze the data, the one-way analysis of variance test was used for each group and as an average for all groups, as well as comparing the difference of the average scores of the groups in the written exam with Tukey’s post-test method. In the end, with the help of the concept map tool, PMTs' misconceptions were identified and classified into 4 categories, failure to correctly recognize the names of graphs, incorrect drawing of statistical graphs, failure to correctly recognize the type of variable and recognition of the appropriate graph for a data set. The research findings showed that the concept map identified the misconceptions of preservice teachers with better results than the results of the written exam. PMTs can use this method to teach different subjects, especially statistics in school, and improve the teaching-learning process and strengthen meaningful learning.