The role of ideational networks in laboratory inquiry learning and knowledge of evolution among seventh grade students

Ideational networks were assessed based on written narrative of seventh grade students who had begun a unit on evolution. The amount of ideational network linkages in narrative, elicited by showing the students a diagram of an evolutionary branching tree of life, was analyzed using flow-map techniques. The number of network linkages in the students' narrative was positively correlated with mean scores on subsequent inquiry laboratory work on evolution (r = 0.5, p ≪ .01). final unit test score on knowledge of biological evolution (r = 0.35, p < .01), and the extent of correct conceptions about evolution contained in the students' written essays as determined by content analyses (r = 0.7, p ≪ .01). Students, who scored high on the content analyses of their written narrative and whose narrative contained extensive ideational network linkages, also tended to use a logical sequential rule of ordering their thoughts based on a phylogenetic principle of evolutionary change accompanying increasing complexity of life (i.e., progression from one-celled organisms to complex multicelled organisms). Moreover, the mean frequency of occurrences of higher level categorical thought in narrative increased with increasing amount of ideational linkages in recall. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed85:410–425, 2001.