Using Concept Mapping to Assess a Large-Scale Project

Concept maps have been used in many research studies to analyze content knowledge transformation, but very few studies examine their use in large-scale projects. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the growth of in-service teacher content knowledge across 37 professional development projects, which include over 1,000 mathematics and/or science teachers. Project directors participate in an orientation to concept maps, which provides a rationale for using them, and instruction for creating an expert C-map. During the project director training, each project director generated C-maps. The C-maps are specific to the content for each institute and align with the major project content objective. The C-maps are used as a template for the creation of S-maps, which are used as pre/post-assessment tools for the evaluation of in-service teacher content knowledge. A team of researchers including science/mathematics education faculty and academic faculty verify the C-maps and provide feedback to project directors prior to the construction of the S-map template. In addition to the concept maps, the number of content courses taken by the in-service teacher and interviews are used for purposes of analyzing teacher content knowledge.