Concept Maps and Case Studies for Effective Learning
Concept Maps
Concept maps allow teachers to collaborate with students, exploring background knowledge and helping students organize, interrelate, and establish understanding of the content studied. The exercise of concept mapping promotes reflection, analysis, and creativity. Concept maps align with a learner-centered model of education, focusing on the development of skills rather than rote memorization, and seeking the harmonious development of all dimensions of the person, not just intellectual ones.
They have three key elements:
Concept
A concept is an event or a regular object identified with a name or label. It can be considered as the word used to designate a certain image of an object or event that occurs in the mind of the individual. There are concepts that define us and other specific elements that define abstract notions that we cannot touch, but exist in reality.
Linking Words
These are prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and, in general, all words that are not concepts and are used to relate concepts to build a “proposition.” Words can link concepts together, construct phrases or sentences with logical meaning, and find the connection between concepts.
Proposition
A proposition consists of two or more concepts linked by linking words in a semantic unit.
The advantages of concept maps include:
- Providing logical organization and structure to learning content, which is useful for selecting, extracting, and separating important information from superficial information.
- Helping to interpret, understand, and infer from the reading material.
- Helping to integrate information into a whole, establishing reporting relationships and interaction.
- Developing ideas and concepts through interconnected learning, allowing you to determine whether a concept is valid and important if it has links.
- Allowing you to determine the need to investigate and deepen the content.
- Facilitating the creation of a map on a particular concept that can lead to learning about other concepts that emerge from it.
- Inserting new concepts into the very structure of knowledge, and the use of images and colors enhances memory retention.
Method of Cases
This method aims to bring a concrete reality to an academic environment through a real or designed case. The advantages of this method are:
- It is interesting.
- It becomes an incentive.
- It motivates learning.
- It develops the ability to analyze and synthesize.
- It makes the content more meaningful for students.
Recommendations for this model include:
- The case should be well prepared and presented.
- The task should be very clear to students.
- The group should reflect on the learning achieved.
The roles for each member are:
- Teachers: Designing or compiling the case, presenting the case, and facilitating and encouraging its solution.
- Students: Investigating and discussing the possible scenarios.
Concept of ACNEAE
ACNEAE (Students with Special Educational Needs) are all students who require educational attention beyond that of ordinary students, including those with:
- Specific learning difficulties.
- High intellectual capacities.
- Late incorporation into the Spanish Educational System.
- Personal conditions.
- School history.
Special educational needs (ACNE) is a category within ACNEAE. These are students who require different educational attention than ordinary students, including those with mental disabilities, sensory or motor impairments, or severe behavioral disorders.