Effect of Concept Mapping on Pedagogic Content Knowledge of Elementary Student Teachers

Abstract

Teacher still has a prominent role in shaping the generations and teacher education institutions handle the responsibility of transformation of teachers. Teachers must have a thorough basis of the content and pedagogic practices for processing the knowledge to the level of students. This paper explores more effective ways of imparting content knowledge among elementary student teachers by comparing the effect of pedagogic analysis and concept mapping strategy on achievement in science of the 78 student teachers belonging to two elementary teacher preparation institutions. Quasi experimental pre-test post-test design with matched groups is employed for the study. The result shows that the experimental group that underwent concept mapping and control group that underwent pedagogic analysis differ significantly in the post test score after treatment. The study concludes that concept mapping can be used to impart content knowledge to student teachers with better effect than pedagogic analysis in teacher training institutions.