The effects of concept mapping on primary school learners’ achievement in Natural Science in Windhoek, Khomas Region, Namibia

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of concept mapping on achievement among the Grade six learners in Natural Science. The study was conducted with 31 learners at Alpha Primary School and 34 learners at Omega Primary School. A quantitative approach in which the quasi-experimental design pre-test and post-test were used in order to find out the difference in learners’ understanding of “matter and its properties” when taught through concept mapping and traditional lecture methods. All learners were given the same pre-test on matter and its properties after which the experimental group was taught the content using the concept mapping method and the control group was taught using the traditional lecture method. The same post-test was administered to both groups. Both the pre-test and post-test and interventions were constructed, conducted and presented by the researcher. All learners were given the same pre-test to write on the first day of conducting the research at each school followed by the interventions for two weeks and then the same post-test on the last day of conducting the research. Each test had 22 items. The scores on both tests were analysed using SPSS data analysis. The findings revealed that learners taught through concept mapping out-performed those who were taught through the traditional lecture method. The concept mapping group mean scores on the pre-test and post-test were 33.97 and 47.32 respectively, while the traditional lecture group had 20.29 and 27.94. This indicated a significant difference in the performance of the experimental group at 0.05 significant level and proved that concept mapping improves learners’ achievements in Natural Science. The study recommended that the use of concept mapping should be extended to other subject areas in order to enhance effective teaching and learning. And further research on concept mapping should be carried out on the implementation and application of concept mapping strategy in all science subjects including mathematics.