CORRELATIONS BETWEEN STUDENTS' SCIENTIFIC LITERACY LEVELS AND CONCEPT MAPS

Different studies in science education have shown that many students have difficulties in understanding concepts and fundamental ideas. Unfortunately, most teachers and schools have tended to focus on getting higher scores on different tests and understanding, reasoning and analysis has received little attention. This study shows how the method of concept mapping could contribute to well-known assessment methods in determining students' scientific literacy. In addition to studying the quantity and quality of cognitive gains concept mapping methods enable the studying of the structure of information. Concept mapping as an assessment method was used in a large-scale study, carried out 2011-2014 in Estonia. The sample for the study was 1614 students, but for addressing this research question, the sub-sample was formed from 343 students. Within this study, the students first solved scenario-based problems in the area of biology by answering several multiple choice and open-ended questions at different cognitive levels as identified by the SOLO taxonomy. Then, the students created concept maps on the same topic as the test. For this, 30 concepts were supplied to the student from which students were asked to creating the maps. Based on the outcomes from a scientific literacy test, students were grouped into four groups and differences in created concept maps between these four groups were analysed. Significant differences in the extent of map, their structure and also content were found. There were also significant differences in the inclusion of different concepts and in concept centralities. This study examined correlations between students' scientific literacy levels and created concept maps.