An investigation into the relationship between concept mapping strategy and performance of students on an objective test

This study set out to assess the effectiveness of concept mapping as a learning strategy in a secondary school environment under conditions that had extremely high external validity without significantly sacrificing experimental control. The study also investigated the extent to which knowledge acquired through concept mapping was retained.
The subjects consisted of two Grade 10 girls' classes of 15 students. The quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design was used. Both groups were given a pretest, posttest and after about a month another posttest. Besides the two objective posttests, the experimental group was also subjected to concept mapping evaluation. Research instruments were administered as proposed by Novak and Gowin (1984) with modifications to suit the local situation. The t-test pairwise comparisons of group means, gain score means and test item comparison means were used as the statistical procedure for analysing the data of the study.
The result of this study showed that exposure to concept mapping learning strategy did not make students perform

better on an objective test. However, students using concept mapping learning strategy reflected a better performance when evaluated by a concept mapping evaluational technique. The implications of these results are discussed and some suggestions for further research are advanced.