Using Concept Mapping in Professional Education
Abstract
Concept mapping is a powerful tool of thought representation. This paper reveals the trends and best usages of concept mapping especially in professional education. As defined here, concept mapping is a graphical display of thinking, a technique for idea representation, and a process for, among other things, problem solving, strategy planning, and thought development. Viewed as a methodological process, concept mapping allows a person to construct relations among different aspects of a subject, to make connections, and to display relations of ideas and constituent parts of thoughts. The concept mapping method is based on the theory of meaningful learning, which posits that knowledgin- memory is saved in propositional and relative ways. The generation of a concept map allows the display of propositional knowledge in a form that can be inspected from various angles, revealing a variety of points of view, scenarios, and models of idea construction. The process is seen to be beneficial for myriad types of decision-making. Concept mapping is used in many fields of education, though in some more than in others. Concept mapping has gained a great deal of recognition in science education, both in the literature and in the practice. But how is concept mapping viewed in the professions? Has it been researched? What is the future of concept mapping in vocational and professional education? The intent of this article is to answer these questions. The approach is to find and cull success significant pieces of research on concept mapping within medical, veterinary, legal and engineering instructional contexts. We identified 311 such research articles and analyzed them. The analysis shows that the main usage of concept mapping in the professions is as a learning tool, often combined with assessment.
