Concept Networks in Learning and the Epistemic Support of Their Key Concepts

Abstract

Concept maps are used in teaching and learning as representations of students’ understanding of conceptual knowledge. Concept maps are basically networks of interlinked web of concepts. A long-standing problem in educational research is identifying the key concepts of importance in such networks. Here we use network analysis to examine students’ representations of the relatedness of physics concepts in the form of concept maps, and suggest how key concepts and their epistemic support can be identified. The concept maps are analysed as directed and weighted networks, where nodes are concepts and links represent different types of connections between concepts. The notion of key concept is operationalised through the communicability, separately for out-going and in-coming weighted links. Using a collated concept network based on a sample of 12 original concept maps constructed by university students we show that the communicability is a simple and reliable way to identify the key concepts and examine their epistemic justification within the network.