The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of two different types of interviews—one that did (POSTICM) and one that did not (POSTI) embed a concept-mapping process—to elicit students' postinstructional understandings about chlorofluorocarbons and their role in global atmospheric change (GAC). A chief criterion measure was accordance, the degree to which students held the ideal postinstructional understanding set forth in a teacher-expert concept map. After GAC instruction that included concept-mapping activities, 34 eighth-grade science students were assigned randomly to groups and completed either POSTICM or POSTI. These students and their teacher also completed relatedness ratings of central concepts from the teacher-expert map. The Knowledge Network Organizing Tool™ was used to transform relatedness ratings to Pathfinder networks and compare nets to yield a student to teacher similarity index (Pathfinder index). Regression analysis revealed that type of interview did not predict accordance. However, most POSTICM students perceived the concept-mapping interview component to be helpful and affect positively their answers to the interview questions. The Pathfinder index did predict (p = .003) accordance—the Pathfinder index was a reliable confirmatory measure of the degree to which students held the ideal postinstructional understanding. J Res Sci Teach 35: 521–546, 1998.
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Rye et al. (1998) studied this question.