The Effect of Concept Maps on Achievement in the Domains of Knowledge, Comprehension and Application Among Gifted and Non-Gifted Female Students

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of concept maps on three dependent variables; namely, achievement in the domains of knowledge, comprehension and application among gifted and non-gifted female students. The sample consisted of (92); (46) gifted and (46) non-gifted students in grade ten. Further, the subjects of the sample were randomly distributed into two equivalent groups; an experimental group and a control group. To answer the research questions, two way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA (2x2)) was performed to investigate the effect of concept maps, learning ability (gifted/ non-gifted) and their possible interactions with performance on the tests of knowledge, comprehension and application as the dependent measures. The main findings indicated that: first, pupils who were subjected to a concept map beside the learning material outperformed pupils in the control group in the domain of application. Second, gifted pupils outperformed non-gifted students on the three dependent measures. Finally, there was an interaction between treatment and learning ability affecting performance in the field of comprehension.