Concept-map Assessments: the Reliability and Validity of Classroom Accessibleconcept-map Assessments

Concept maps have been used as learning andinstructional tools in education for the last 30years. Their use in evaluating learning andinstruction has been not as enthusiasticallyreceived. This is a result of several factorsincluding the challenge of scoring concept maps thatreflect the idiosyncratic way in which individualsrepresent their knowledge. That said, one concept-mapassessment in particular known as the construct-a-maptask has shown great promise in facilitating reliableand valid inferences from student concept-mapratings. With all of its promise, however, theconstruct-a-map task is burdened with several ratingdifficulties. One challenge in particular is that nopublished rubric has been developed that accounts forthe degree to which individual propositions areimportant to an understanding of the overall topic ortheme of the map. Such a challenge has made itpossible in some instances for less knowledgeablestudents to receive higher concept-mapping scoresthan more knowledgeable students. This workrepresents an attempt to examine the psychometricproperties of two construct-a-map tasks designed toovercome in part this rating difficulty.