Concept Maps as Assessments of Expertise: Understanding of the Complexity and Interrelationships of Concepts in Science

Concept maps were created as one of six measures to identify exceptionally talented students during the Cultivating Diverse Talent in STEM (CDTIS) project, with the goal of identifying and nurturing talents in students from groups traditionally underrepresented in special programs. New methods were compared with conventional methods to select students for an internship in the laboratories of scientists. In this article, we describe development, field testing, and implementation of the concept map assessments in life and physical science. Assessments were field tested in partner schools with high percentages of American Indian (97% to 100%) and Hispanic (83%) low-income students. Students were selected by considering their performance on all six assessments and were placed in internships along with students selected using conventional methods. Concept maps were successful: (a) students from partner schools demonstrated high levels of domain-relevant skills; (b) scores approximated a normal distribution; (c) scores of students from culturally diverse, low-income groups were very similar to the scores of students selected using conventional methods even though many of conventionally identified students had high grade point averages and came from schools in high-income areas with many educational opportunities. Students completed original research and presented posters to the university community and their local communities. Concept maps can be used alone or in combination with other assessments; their use needs to be studied with larger groups of students and in other contexts.