Constructing causal maps and the effect of prior knowledge and causal reasoning process on the quality of causal maps: a study on primary school students

ABSTRACT

The quality of products from the causal mapping process and the effect of factors related to causal map quality are unlikely to be the same for students at different educational levels. However, there is a lack of studies that provide insights into causal maps constructed by primary school students to reveal appropriate strategies. This study conducted an analysis of 32 causal maps constructed by primary school students to explore the quality of these products as well as the effect of prior knowledge and causal reasoning process on causal map quality. The findings suggested that it is quite possible for primary school students to construct quality causal maps. The results also indicated that students with higher prior knowledge produced higher-quality causal maps regardless of the causal reasoning process used by these students. In contrast, the causal reasoning process was found to have no significant effect on students’ causal map quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Causal map
• prior knowledge
• causal reasoning process
• causal map quality
• primary school student

Acknowledgments

I would like to express gratitude to Allan Jeong who provided support regarding the jMAP software for this study. I would also like to thank all of the students and teachers who participated in this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).