Snake Concept Map

Daniel Goleman is known for his books on Emotional Intelligence. But before that  fame, he wrote several books on cognitive psychology of equal relevance to teachers.

His ideas often revolved around people’s schemas. Or as he put it “the packets of information” we have in our heads that help us make sense of the world. More recently they are known by their more business–friendly term mental models.In one of these books he explains the mental processes that occur when you see a snake — and are scared of it. He wanted to capture as concisely and clearly as possible all the various responses going on inside a person’s head.

He chose a concept map for the task. According to Joseph Novak, the originator and major developer of the concept map, a concept map should start from the top and proceed down the hierarchy of concepts.

As you can see in Goleman’s example, he doesn’t follow Novak’s guidelines. And wisely so in my opinion. This concept map is very tightly constructed and shows the core relationship between the person and the snake. At the same time, the assumptions, reactions and fears are intelligently interwoven.

How do you read a concept map? Just read from one elipse to another by way of the linking verb. These are, essentially, simple sentences: subject > verb > object. As in “I see snake”, “I feel fear”, "snake is diamond backed” and so on.As they are able to communicate so many concepts and so much meaning, concept maps are as wonderful as Advance Organisers.

Advance Organisers are a teacher’s preview of a topic given at the start of a lesson. The aim is to give all students the core principles and facts so they create a schema, or framework, of the topic before encountering all the details.

As Geoff Petty explains in his book Evidence Based Teaching, the aim is to ensure that every student, in his words “gets the gist” right from the beginning.

Reference:
Daniel Goleman (1985), Vital Lies, Simple Truths, Bloombury, London
Joseph Novak (1998) Learning, Creating and Using Knowledge, Lawrance Erlbaum, New Jersey
Geoff Petty (2006), Evidence Based Teaching, Nelson Thornes, London