AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
work with mental representations of learners. A learner’s
learning strategies should always be assessed especially in the
context of his/her cognitive preconditions, thinking, ways of
processing verbal and non-verbal information, memory.
Modification of learning strategies is very challenging for
learners as learning is very often connected with a number of
different habits and automated activities.
Ertmer, Newby (2013) include the following among learning and
teaching strategies that develop learners’ critical thinking:
structuring of the curriculum, instructional explanation,
conceptual mapping, summaries, syntheses, mnemonics,
information organization, analogies, demonstrations, organizing
and classifying of information to encourage optimal information
processing.
4 Strategies of Curriculum Structuring
When learning or teaching it is necessary to convey to learners
not only individual concepts but also the relationships between
them. Many times in an effort to understand the relationship
between concepts learners are unable to identify the basic
structure of the curriculum in the presented text - they either
create an incomplete structure or include insignificant
relationships in it. Therefore we consider as important that
teachers lead their learners during the educational process to be
able to independently assemble a structure of the curriculum and
then create the entire conceptual-relationship network.
In our understanding we perceive structuring of
the curriculum as a basic identification and detection of syntactic
structures in mutual relations from the aspect of transfer to the
mental space of learners.
Resnick (1996) characterizes three basic indicators that influence
the structuring of the curriculum: the manner of teaching
(teaching methods, lesson organization), age of
learners (adequacy of mediated content to learners), range of
curriculum (perfect mastery of main concepts of the curriculum
and relationships between them).
The teacher’s main principle should be to explain
the curriculum to the learners as plastically as possible so that
the created "real image" can be transformed into a language that
learners understand. In our school system it is as if we have
forgotten the technique by which we could significantly simplify
learning for learners. We talk about optimal structuring of
the curriculum that prevents the mechanical learning of the
selected content but supports the processing of the curriculum in
its own - understandable way. The problem with current
educational practice is that learners often know how to name the
facts, data, concepts, the main ideas of the curriculum but they
are not able to understand the text, notice and interpret the
relationships between the concepts of the so-called concept –
relation network. Therefore we came to a conclusion that
teaching should be implemented in order to lead learners toward
understanding the meaning of the presented curriculum in a
comprehensive context. The semantic structure and the broad-
spectrum variability of the semantic perception of the curriculum
fundamentally influence its subsequent interpretation.
As follows from the above statements the correct structuring of
the curriculum is important for better and easier remembering by
learners (as there is a better construction of meanings). Through
structuring we can consciously create connections between pre-
acquired and new knowledge, structuring can be perceived as an
active process in which learners create and seek meaning.
Among other things students’ learning is through structuring
more contextual (isolated facts and theories are not learned in
abstract form, as they are transcoded into an easier-to-remember
form).
4.1 Conceptual Mapping
By the analysis of relevant literary sources we characterize
conceptual mapping as the creation of comprehensive schemes
of structural relationships. It is about the organization of the
logical structure of certain cognition, the creation of causal,
mutual or possibly final relational levels between the whole and
its main parts within cognition (ideas, concepts, hypotheses,
principles). We consider the concept map as a design of the mind
to be the ultimate function of thinking. The map is stored in
memory as a structure in which auditory and visual data about
specific information are accumulated together with models of
effective action.
Conceptual mapping as opposed to linear (in professional
literature called 'traditional') structuring of information
represents a system that supports the way the human brain
works, which is supported by numerous studies of meta-analysis
of cognitive benefits of mapping (Nesbit, Adesope, 2006).
Conceptual mapping is a natural technique (the rooted
equipment of the human thinking model) for organizing
information and visualizing a complex of data as well as their
mutual interactions. Through the given technique we can look at
the curriculum holistically but also analytically. It brings an
innovative view to the subject matter of curriculum and its
structure or systematization.
Understanding and interpreting the conceptual map is a
demanding and active process that has a relational character as
the learner identifies his/her own knowledge structure and key
elements of the curriculum. By connecting information with
previously created and functional networks of knowledge we
gradually mature towards new forms of understanding. We
consider conceptual mapping to be a useful technique that
facilitates effective learning, the development of critical thinking
and the organization of received information into logical
relationships (between concepts, ideas, connections,
associations).
5 Empirical Considerations
The research was focused on finding connections between the
presentation of the curriculum by the teacher and the resulting
learner’s mental representation of the curriculum - shown
through a concept map. Remembering a set of facts or
knowledge from the curriculum is not enough. Emphasis is
placed on whether the learners have understood the discussed
curriculum, whether they can work with it and interconnect
related knowledge (included in their internal knowledge
structure).
The main goal of our research was to analyze the conceptual
level of structuring the curriculum and its relationship to the
creation of mental representations among learners in upper
secondary education.
In the research area we analyzed how the selected type of
curriculum structuring applied in mediating the content of the
subject history influences the conceptualization of learners’
knowledge reflected in their mental representations - represented
by a concept map.
H: We assume that learners to whom the subject content was
presented by nonlinear structuring achieve a statistically
significantly higher level of graphical visualization of the map
than learners to whom the subject content has been presented by
linear structuring.
5.1 Selection of Research Sample
The professional public considers developmental psychology to
be one of the most important aspects in the selection as well as
in the organization of the curriculum, specifically the age
assumptions and learners’ ability to master the curriculum.
When we were considering the target group the high school
environment appeared to be optimal. It is in high school that
learners gradually move to the stage of cognitive development,
in which they are able to abstract, work with hypothetical
judgments, think in general terms and generalizations. It is about
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