Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Recent research in science education has shown that students frequently fail to understand scientific concepts and principles, e.g., photosynthesis. In the present study, elementary-school aged children were trained in how to conduct a collaborative inquiry into photosynthesis. Concept maps and comprehension pretest and posttests were used to assess the effects of the training. Students w h o had received the training had concepts maps which contained significantly more accurate scientific relational links depicting a more functional understanding of photosynthesis, and they retained more subject matter knowledge than the students w h o did not receive the training. The research supports the importance of inquiry training to facilitate conceptual understanding of scientific knowledge and emphasizes the usefulness of conceptual mapping techniques as evaluative measures of students' conceptual change.^