The efficacy of the provision of pre-planned, individual and cooperative methods of preparing concept maps as an instructional strategy

Constructivism approach is one of the most important theoretical frameworks in the formation and development of the new instructional revisions and activities. The main focus of constructivism is the fact that individuals construct knowledge actively. Concept map is one of the modern instructional methods in the sense that it is closely related to constructivism. The concept map is the visual representation of meaningful relations between concepts. The main purpose of the present study is to improve the efficacy concept map as a learning-teaching strategy. Likewise the minor purpose has been to make an analogy between the effectiveness of the provision of pre-planned concept maps on one hand and the development of concept maps by learners on the other. The comparison of the effectiveness of individual and cooperative methods of preparing concept maps was also taken into account. The participants of the study were 55 primary school teachers who participated in three discrete in-service training classes. The research project was a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and pos-test. The participants were assigned to three experimental groups. The first experimental group was given pre-planned concept maps in the process of classroom education. The second experimental group prepared the concept maps individually. Meanwhile the third experimental group prepared the concept maps cooperatively. Research results revealed that the post-tests averages increased compared to pre-tests averages but the efficacy maximal was observed in the group of individually preparing concept maps. The least efficacy is observed in the provision of pre-planned concept maps.