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Personal Meaning Mapping and Focused Field Trips: Capturing Change

Abstract

This paper discusses Personal Meaning Mapping (PMM), a useful tool for classroom teachers that can provide evidence of students’ learning while at an informal science setting. These are unique environments that require measures that can capture content learning in diverse spaces (such as museums, zoos, aquariums, etc.). A scoring rubric for PMM was also developed and introduced. The sample consisted of 54 ninth-grade biology students, in five classes, at a Chicago Public School (CPS). As part of the biology curriculum, the classes went on a focused field trip to the Field Museum, a large natural history museum in Chicago, IL, to study energy flow within ecosystems. Students were asked to complete the PMM before and after the field trip experience. This, along with interviews and observations, provided relevant data on student learning. The results indicated that students showed an increased use of appropriate, content related, words and sentences.

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