Implications of Graphic Organizers Th

Implications of Graphic Organizers in the Classroom Beth de Anda Northern Illinois University

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Implications of Graphic Organizers

Theme/Problem Statement How has the learning theory of cognitivism influenced the classroom of today? One way it has been put to use in the classroom is by the ubiquitous use of graphic organizers (GOs) as aids to improve comprehension. Typically a textbook used to include an outline of each chapter. The second edition of Marcy P. Driscolls Psychology of Learning for Instruction, however, uses concept maps to illustrate the interconnections and hierarchies of the chapters concepts. Stemming from D. P. Ausubels development of an advance organizer to fill in the gaps of a learners background knowledge, an enticing array of GOs have been developed to support and facilitate student learning. But has there indeed been an increase in students cognitive abilities when GOs are employed? If so, in what areas is enhanced cognition manifested? What guidelines can one apply in the classroom from the various studies that have tracked the effects of GOs? Definition of a Graphic Organizer A graphic organizer is an outline of concepts that uses two-dimensional spatial format to illustrate connections and hierarchies between concepts. GOs present information visually. This is what sets them apart from a traditional one-dimensional, linear outline. Andrew D. Katayama and Steven M. Crooks state that GOs are a spatial arrangement of concepts to communicate their relations, without spelling out the relations for the student. (2003) There are different types of GOs such as matrices, tree diagrams, concept maps, Venn diagrams, rational set generators, story maps, semantic maps, and cognitive maps to name a few. On-line and electronic GOs have also been developed for classroom utilization. The spatial structure is the key to a GO as GOs must present information visually. It has been suggested that the enhanced effect of GOs on memory is due to the activation of the visual memory areas of the brain.
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Implications of Graphic Organizers

Theoretical Foundations of Graphic Organizers D. P. Ausubel developed short summary paragraphs that were to be presented to students prior to a learning activity. The purpose was to help students activate prior background knowledge or to fill in the gaps of an inadequate foundation. It was a strategy that was designed to help students actively engage in a task to make the learning meaningful. Other schema theorists shared this concern with activating prior knowledge. Story maps that featured areas for students to fill in the basic story elements of characters, setting, problem, events and solution were found to enhance recall of the story for later retelling. (Marcy P. Driscoll, 2000). Driscoll goes on to say that Ausubel deplored the common practice of textbook writers to compartmentalize ideas or topics into separate chapters without exploring their relationships. (P. 144, 2000) Hence, many GOs were developed to pick up on text clues of organization and create a visual guide to the information such as a Venn diagram used in conjunction with a text that compares and contrasts various elements. Other comparison organizers would be concept trees and comparative organizers, which is a matrix that utilizes rows and columns to compare and contrast ideas and concepts. Trends/Patterns From these early beginnings in schema theory, what trends and patterns have emerged in conjunction with the use of GOs? Due to the wide variety and types of GOs its not surprising that initially there were inconclusive patterns supporting their effectiveness. However, extensive research in the utilization of GOs in schools and universities has begun to point to certain assumptions that are proving to be true and others that are being discredited. The most basic assumption that has to be validated, however, is whether they are effective in increasing learning in students. As GOs are seen with increasing frequency in classrooms, it is crucial that their

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Implications of Graphic Organizers

effectiveness be ascertained or valuable instruction time is being wasted. Each of the five reports that read pointed out areas in which use of GOs by students makes a difference and other areas where their use leads to little or no improvement in learning. Overall, GOs are effective in providing visual clues as to the hierarchy and interconnections of concepts. Reading of text requires that students make these connections on their own. Textbooks try to give clues about the organization through headings, subheadings and chapters, but not every reader is able to make such inferences. Learning disabled (LD) students especially seem to be unable to make such connections. Giving students an opportunity to review text material with a GO supports students in making these connections that signify a higher order of understanding. There is evidence, however, that points to the idea that giving a student a ready made GO that requires nothing more from the student than to study it is not the most effective method in utilizing GOs. Chang, Sung & Chen in their study on concept-mapping strategies found that partially completed concept maps were more effective in helping students increase their recall of the concepts and in application of the concepts to novel situations. Most effective of all were map correction activities in which students were given concept maps wherein approximately 60% of the information was incorrect. As students worked with the concept map, they had to look for the inaccuracies and correct them. This is a different way to use concept maps, but it proved to be highly effective. Students engaged in this activity were able to write better text summaries than both the control group and the group using concept maps in a more standard way. (Chang, Sung & Chen, 2002). Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek and Wei (2004) in their study on GOs found that students who generated their own organizers improved their reading comprehension more than students who reviewed text using a teacher-made organizer. It was

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suggested that students who are actively engaged in some measure with the GO develop a deeper understanding of the material. Being active in a learning activity requires more cognitive engagement and makes such activities more meaningful. If students are more cognitively engaged in their learning while utilizing GOs, then it should stand to reason that students would have better recall of the concepts that they learned. This, however, does not always hold true. Certain types of learning are not enhanced by the use of GOs. Simple recall of facts is high immediately after use of the GO, but the same results are found after reading text. Delay testing and recall drops just as fast in both groups. GOs were shown to enhance recall of hierarchical and coordinate relations, comparing and contrasting features, and applying knowledge to novel situations. (Robinson & Kiewra, 1995) Plus, students found GOs a more user-friendly strategy to implement when studying. This is an important consideration when working with unmotivated students or LD students who might be easily overwhelmed with text material. As a result of education requirements mandated by the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLBL), it is critical that educators find more effective ways to increase learning in all students in the classroom. This includes LD and English language learners (ELL). Because of the visual nature of GOs, they hold great promise in this area. Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek and Wei (2004) found significant benefits for LD students in GOs. They reviewed over 21 studies in order to conclude that reading comprehension was increased when GOs were used in conjunction with reading the text. One study, which did not support such findings, was found to include non-LD students. The authors concluded that the learning styles of LD students were better suited to follow visual organization than the linear organization of text. This might not be so then with non-LD students.

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Implications of Graphic Organizers

Reflection Statement The study of learning theories this semester has been very interesting to me as I can now articulate why I am using certain strategies in my classroom. I understand now why certain learning activities suggested by my reading and science basals are organized the way they are. For example, the science textbook publisher has a series of worksheets that requires students to answer true-false questions in such a way that any question that is false must be corrected to make a true statement. This is a variation of the map-correction activity developed by Chang, Sung, and Chen in their research on the effects of concept mapping. Such an activity requires cognitive engagement as the student not only needs to judge whether the material is true or false but must then reword any false statements to make them true. When looking for trends that signify GOs that are effective, one must look for GOs that engage students in active or meaningful learning. Presenting students with a GO such as Ausubels advance organizer or a completed concept map does not actively engage students in their learning. They can sit back and absorb the material, but there is no indication that it is being absorbed until the student is assessed. At that point, it might be too late. Too often learning disabled students are passive learners. Such students need to be encouraged at every step of the way to become active participants in their learning. GOs that require their participation ensure cognitive engagement. As with any learning strategy, there is no one size fits all. The research showed that GOs had little or no effect on recall of facts. It would be a waste of time for teachers to employ GOs in such a role then. Instead, strategies that are effective in enhancing recall such as mnemonic devices should be used instead. Just because a GO may be effective in one area does not mean that its use is universal. Research needs to continue so as to further refine the application of GOs in the classroom.

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Implications of Graphic Organizers

RefReferences Chang, K., Sung, Y., Chen, I. (2002). The effect of concept mapping to enhance text comprehension and summarization. The Journal of Experimental Education, 71(1), 5-23. Driscoll, M. P. (2000). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Katayama, A. D., & Crooks, S. M. (2003). Online notes: differential effects of studying complete or partial graphically organized notes. The Journal of Experimental Education, 71(4), 293-312. Kim, A., Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., & Wei, S. (2004). Graphic organizers and their effects on the reading comprehension of students with ld: a sysnthesis of research. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(2), 105-118. Robinson, D. H., & Kiewra, K. A. (1995). Visual argument: graphic organizers are superior to outlines in improving learning from text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87(3), 455467. Schorzman, E. M., & Cheek, E. H. (2004). Structured strategy instruction: investigating an intervention for improving sixth-graders reading comprehension. Reading Psychology, 25, 37-60.

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Implications of Graphic Organizers instruction be esearch based.

Article Title
Structured Strategy Instruction: Investigating an Intervention for Improving SixthGraders Reading Comprehension

Issue(s)
This study investigates the effectiveness of three reading strategies in improving reading comprehension. Although these strategies are widely used in classrooms, there is little empirical data that supports their efficacy. This study builds an indepth investigation to ascertain the effectiveness of graphic organizers, Directed Reading-Thinking activities and Pre-reading plans on reading comprehension.

Theoretical framework
Graphic organizers emerged from cognitive information processing theories. Selective attention refers to the ability to attend to some information, at the same time ignoring other information. Graphic organizers, pre-reading strategies, and Directed Reading activities direct the learners attention to the critical aspects of the lesson.

Author assumptions/ Ideas

This study compares methods of instruction found in packaged skills-based programs that school districts typically use to meet the requirements of standardized state tests. Typically these programs include the introduction of a skill, guided practice, and independent practice. The intervention strategies that the authors were looking at included graphic organizers, Directed Reading activities and prereading guides. While it is a widely held belief that students need comprehension instruction, the authors were concerned about the lack of research supporting the efficacy of the intervention strategies listed here. Investigations by the authors revealed a lack of empirical support for these commonly used strategies either singularly or in combination. The results of the study were conflicting. The formal reading assessment, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test showed insignificant difference between the comprehension gains of students participating in a formal reading program and one that implemented the intervention strategies. While both groups improved, gains was about the same in each group. An informal reading test, the cloze procedure tests, showed a significant difference in favor of those students employing the intervention strategies. Such differences could be due to the different natures of the two tests rather than the design of the instruction interventions. The formal test could reflect natural improvement by students employing the intervention strategies and improved test-taking skills on the part of the control group. The program the control group was exposed to explicitly taught test-taking strategies that would apply to formal standardized tests. The cloze test uses context clues to measure reading comprehension. These skills are more difficult to teach in a formal reading program so it may have been the more accurate test in this case. Thus showing that intervention students had made more significant gains than the control group.

Conclusion
The authors must conclude at this point that gains in reading comprehension could be due to a variety of variables that could be controlled and some that must remain independent. Since the two assessments used to measure gains showed conflicting results, more research must be done to ascertain the efficacy of the intervention strategies. In addition, further research must be done on the use intervention strategies used in different combinations and alone. While graphic organizers have received the most attention from researchers, other popular intervention strategies must be looked at, too. The researchers explain that in this study the results of the cloze test would appear to be more reliable due to the difficulty of employing test-taking strategies to circumvent this test. The standardized test uses specific formats that students favor students who are familiar with those platforms. In contrast, success on cloze tests is due to specific skills in good comprehension such as attending to context clues and in being able to predict and readapt to new information.

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Article Title
Graphic Organizers and Their Effects on the Reading comprehension of Students with LD: A Synthesis of Research

Issue(s)
What do research studies show in regards to the effectiveness of graphic organizers on the reading comprehension of learning disabled (LD) students? Graphic organizers have become a ubiquitous tool employed by special education teachers. Thus, it is vital that their efficacy be documented. The authors of this study searched professional journals of the past 40 years for studies investigating the correlation between the use of graphic organizers and reading comprehensoin. By ascertaining the overall trends found in research, the authors conclude that a positive correlation exists between the two.

Theoretical framework
Ausubel saw the value in graphic organizers as a way to provide a stable organization to a learners cognitive structures. Meaningful learning is activating schemata and organizing it. LD students appear to approach new learning situations without stable organization of their cognitive structures. To facilitate organization for such students, they must be helped to develop relationships between what they already know and what they are learning. To make texts meaningful, students should employ comparative organizers. In addition, these organizers can alert learners as to the type of organization their textbook is using.

Author assumptions/ Ideas

Educators use graphic organizers to support students understanding of concepts and relationships in the text they read. As they advance in school, students are more and more often called upon to read to learn. At each grade level, this puts greater and greater emphasis on reading comprehension. Students with learning disabilities are faced with many challenges as they try to develop meaning out of what they read. A common strategy to assist LD students reading comprehension is the use of graphic organizers. As their use becomes more common, it is necessary to ascertain their effectiveness. Although practitioner journals or texts recommend the use of graphic organizers as an effective strategy to promote the comprehension of expository text, the accumulated body of research demonstrates inconclusive findings for supporting such a recommendation. (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Wei, 2004) The past 30 years then have seen numerous researchers undertake studies to ascertain the effects upon comprehension of graphic organizers. Most of this research has focused on the effects on regular-education students showing little discernable effect. What then are the effects of graphic organizers on students whose cognition is poorly organized? It follows that learners with poorly organized cognitive structures in a subject matter should be aided I learning by materials that make clear similarities and differences among concepts to be learned. In fact, early studies conducted by Ausubel and his associates provided evidence that this was true. (BOOK p. 126.) In this study the authors are then going through studies of the past 30 years to ascertain if organizers promote comprehension in LD students. In addition, they are comparing the effects of graphic organizers presented prior to or after reading text, teacher versus student generated organizers and outcome measures.

Conclusion
Evidence has been found to support the use of graphic organizers as an effective strategy that can benefit LD students. This finding is consistent across the 30 years of studies that the researches studied. The most impressive results were obtained when researchers used their assessments to measure comprehension gains. This may lead to further questions as to whether the assessments designed by the researchers are more biased than a standardized test or whether such tests are in fact better designed. The study also shows that graphic organizers that are student generated are more effective than those designed for the study by the instructor. Results after a follow up to determine if comprehension gains were maintained or applied in new situations were disappointing. Little effect was found on the reading comprehension of regular-education students.

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Article Title
The Effect of Concept Mapping to Enhance Text Comprehension and Summarization

Issue(s)
A variety of GOs have been developed to increase student learning. Coming from schema theory and processes of meaningful learning, graphic organizers attempt to make visible the connections and relationships between concepts that a student is trying to master. Within this realm then, what has proved most effective amongst the different types of organizers. The authors of this study look into three areas to determine the best ways to provide visual methods of learning linear text. First the authors look at GOs that are developed by the teacher with the student filling information in by following the framework. Next the authors compare the effectiveness of graphic organizers that are student generated. The student constructs the GO and organizes the texts information according to the framework he/she created. The third type of GO is a concept map that makes incorrect connections between concepts. The idea then is to have the students find the misconnects and correct them.

Theoretical framework
This study develops use of the self-generated GOs through scaffolding. The teacher offers complete support in the initial use of the concept maps, gradually withdrawing that support until the students are sufficient in developing their own organizers. This narrows the zone of proximal development as students are able to accomplish more and more independently. GOs support cognitive information processing as they give learners increased self-control over the information they are trying to process. All three methods in this study use graphic organizers to give visual clues to text organization. What then is the best way to support students in learning how to use them? How much selfcontrol do students need in order to achieve optimum benefits?

Author assumptions/ Ideas

GOs help students see the connections and hierarchies of concepts in what they read. Presenting students with such text outlines already made will experience learning in a passive way. This type of learning is essentially reception learning where the students involvement is rote memorization of facts. Yes, the material is organized in a way that manifests connections and hierarchies of concepts, but the learner has no opportunity to discover such connections for him/herself. According to Ausubel then, learning in this manner is not meaningful. However, it does save time in the classroom that can then be devoted to learning other things. On the opposite end of the spectrum then are GOs that are entirely student generated. Students would be trained in how to develop such concept maps of material that they have read and then to organize the material in the non-linear fashion of a GO. This would ensure that learning was meaningful in that the student was cognitively engaged in developing the connections between concepts. However, does classroom time allow for students to be coached in developing their own organizers, and if time is not a negating factor, how effective in developing reading comprehension are these activities. A third alternative the authors propose is to provide students with a concept map or GO that is completed for the student but approximately 40% of the concepts or concept connections are incorrect. Students do not have to spend so much of their own cognitive energy in developing the GO yet they are cognitively engaged in what they are learning as they discover and correct the false concept connections.

Conclusion
A pre- and posttest comparison of text comprehension utilizing the three approaches to utilization of GOs shows that there is poorer comprehension and retention of information when students were presented with GOs that were complete in and of themselves so that students had only to look them over. Interestingly enough, comprehension and retention were also poorer when students had to completely develop the organizer themselves. The authors suggest that this causes a cognitive overload, wherein there is little time or attention left over after completing the GO to attend to understanding what the concepts mean. In contrast, however, students who worked with the mapcorrective method showed the biggest gains in comprehension and retention of information. The authors believe that having students engage in verifying and correcting information requires them to have a good understanding of the concepts themselves and how they relate to other ideas. This method ensures a student who is cognitively engaged in meaningful learning.

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Issue(s)

Theoretical framework

Author assumptions/ Ideas

Conclusion

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Online Notes: Differential Effects of Studying Complete or Partial Graphically Organized Notes

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of complete note-taking GOs to partial note-taking GOs. Complete note-taking referred to a set of notes that organized a hierarchy which manifested the relationships between concepts among the material to be learned. Partial notes were GOs that partially filled in the concepts and the connections between them. The learner would fill in the missing information as he/she went through the text material. Students would be measured under two different testing conditions, an immediate test and a test delayed by one week. Three different tests would be administered. First there would be an on-line fact test, which was a basic recall of factual information learned. The second type of test was a paper-and-pencil structure test, in which students recalled the hierarchical organization of the reading materials. Finally, there was a paper-and-pencil application test which tested higher-order thinking skills wherein students applied what they had learned to novel situations. In addition, the notes, both partial and completed, would be provided in an electronic format.

As the authors discuss their assumptions about GOs and test types, it is obvious that cognitivist theories are the foundation of their research. The article refers to students not activating prior knowledge as a possible explanation for the poor results found when students generate outlines of text materials. The remedy for getting students to make connections to existing schema is to engage them cognitively in developing a hierarchy that makes connections between ideas and concepts through the use of partially completed notes on a GO. In order to test higher order thinking in students ability to recognize the hierarcal order of material, the authors designed a test that will measure retention of superordinate concepts and subordinate concepts. Cognitive theories are concerned with this framework of organizing learning as it explains the type of linkages the learner makes in relating new material to previously learned material.

At the outset of this study, the authors state their assumption that GOs are a more effective method than outlines for supporting students in recognizing connections between concepts and applying text knowledge to novel situations. More information is needed, however, to ascertain the most effective types of GOs and to increase the length of time that new knowledge is retained after the initial learning session. Because partially completed GOs require more cognitive engagement on the part of the learner, the authors expect to see greater increases in the amount of factual knowledge that the students remember and also to see an increase in recall of the hierarchial organization of the text material. It is important for students to actively engage in their learning by interacting with the material in some way. Since few other studies have looked into the effects of students working with partially completed frameworks to guide then into engaging with text material, the authors felt this might be the piece that is missing in making GOs more effective in longterm retention of material.

Implications of Graphic Organizers 12 As the authors predicted, test scores of students who were engaged in completing the partially completed notes were higher than the scores of students who were exposed only to the complete sets of notes. This difference was especially significant when scores of the delayed tests were analyzed. While both groups experienced memory decay, students who worked with partially complete GOs had less memory decay than their counterparts in the experiment. The one area where the researchers were surprised with the results of their research was when there was no difference between the two groups when scores on the fact test were compared. In other words, the increased effects of partially completed GOs are more conducive to higher order thinking skills than to rote memorization learning. It was also noted that students who took notes on the computer did significantly better than students who used paper and pencil. It is suggested that this is a result of the text search function that students can utilize while using the computer. As students become proficient with using such features, they also become more proficient at identifying relevant information.

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Article Title
Visual Argument: Graphic Organizers Are Superior to Outlines in Improving Learning From Text

Issue(s)
The authors of this study are addressing the question as to what strategies have the greatest effect on student learning: GOs, outlines or well organized text material. Concerned with the fact that GOs may have appeared to have a greater impact on student learning in previous studies than they actually do because of poorly written, poorly organized and short text passages, this study will require participants to study material approximately 12 pages long that is organized as well as a typical textbook in that it has headings and subheading to offer clues as to the hierarchy of the material. In addition, the study will test more than simple factual recall. The assessments utilized will test factual recall in addition to relations and application of the material. An essay test that will measure comparison and contrast of concepts.

Theoretical framework
GOs are derived from Ausubels advance organizers. They are similar in that they both provide a synopsis of the material in an abstract manner. A GO, however, will present the material in a twodimensional framework; whereas, the advance organizer has a linear format similar to text. Neither are designed to increase simple recall of facts, but rather to develop higher level thinking. The assessments designed in this study are oriented toward higher level thinking in that students are asked to make connections between key ideas and to compare and contrast information.

Author assumptions/ Ideas

In order to answer the question of what strategies best help students understand and learn new information the authors set out to compare the effects of outlines, graphic organizers and text alone. Because previous students did not show GOs as adding any advantage to student learning, the authors set out to test GOs being used in a similar way that typical students would prepare for a test. In a classroom setting, students would not be tested immediately after learning something, but rather, would be tested a few to several days later. The authors predict that GOs will be more effective in delaying forgetting of information due to their ability to show relationships between concepts rather than just lists of facts to be recalled. Students using GOs would outperform students using outlines or text only on essays where they had to compare and contrast concepts due to the fact that GOs illustrate these concepts visually. Most importantly, GOs will facilitate application abilities as students will be able to better apply what they have learned to novel situations. This is due to the fact that GOs illustrate both the hierarchy of concepts and their interconnections.

Conclusion
Predictions were born out in this study as the authors predictions in regards to GOs playing a significant role in increasing students performance on assessments requiring higher level thinking skills. While factual recall performance was not improved, application of knowledge to novel situations, ability to compare and contrast concepts and delayed decrease in memory of newly learned material were confirmed. Students using GOs outperformed students using outlines and students using only the text itself as a study guide. Overall, no group performed well on the factual recall test. The authors suggested that perhaps there was too much material to be mastered in the allotted timeframe students were given to attend to the text and to the study aids.

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