Concept mapping

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Concept Mapping is a technique to visualize the relations between concepts. Concepts, like "dog" or "animal", are connected with labelled arrows, for example ("is-a", "related-to" or "part of"). As opposed to Mind Mapping, which only allows hierarchies (tree structures), concept maps allow any kind of connections between the concepts (true graph structure).

Concept maps are widely used in education and business for brainstorming, communicating complex ideas etc.

The technique of concept mapping was developed by Joseph D Novak [1] [2] at Cornell University in the 1960. "Concept maps have their origin in the learning movement called constructivism. In particular, constructivists hold that prior knowledge is used as a framework to learn new knowledge.His work was based on the theories of David Ausubel (assimilation theory), who stressed the importance of prior knowledge in being able to learn about new concepts. Novak concluded that "Meaningful learning involves the assimilation of new concepts and propositions into existing cognitive structures".

For more information see the WikEd version of Concept mapping [[3]]

External link

Concept Mapping Homepage by Jan Lanzing
"The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How To Construct Them", Joseph D. Novak, Cornell University
Italian Site on the Concept Mapping use in the school, by Marco Guastavigna
The Brain, Commercial software package for mapping concepts