ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of a two-year project that sought to increase organizational learning in an urban school, Thomas Paine High School, through the use of such mapping. Curriculum developers have created concept maps for textbooks and teachers’ guides, and teachers have used these in classrooms as an instructional technique to help students see holistically the relationships among concepts. When the concept mapping intervention began after five years of restructuring activity, the sense of progress—and the growing impatience with the fact that a great deal remained to be done—was palpable. The literature describing the use of concept mapping is of two types: that related to student learning and curriculum development; and that related to program evaluation and planning. Adapting the mapping process of N. Khattri and M.B. Miles, we focused on Paine’s goals and the process for achieving them, in an effort to probe issues central to change in the school.
