EDU555

CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

ARTICLE REVIEW

Facilitating Malaysian Student Teachers Understanding of the

Biology Syllabus Through Concept Mapping

By:
NAME

: NUR IFFA BINTI ZAINAL

STUDENT ID

: 2013467356

GROUP

: ED2474A

LECTURERS NAME

: MR. MUHAMAD FURKAN BIN MAT SALLEH

SUMMARY
Facilitating Malaysian Student Teachers Understanding of the Biology Syllabus
through Concept Mapping is an article wrote by Maznah Ali and Zurida Ismail, lecturers at
School of Educational Studies in University Science Malaysia. This article mainly discussed
about how concept mapping can generate the ideas and knowledge among students that take
education course as preparation to be teacher in understanding Biology that foccussed the
Biology syllabus of form four students in Malaysia High School.
This article emphasizes on how to generate ideas and knowledge among preservice
teachers on how to delivering the ideas using concept mapping. Besides that, this article also
want to reveal the misunderstanding and misconception among preservice teachers in their
understanding in Biology form four syllabus. On top of that, the article state that the study of
this assignment aimed to familiarize the preservice teachers with the form four high school
syllabus. Next, this purposed of this assignment as said by Maznah Ali and Zurida Ismail was
to investigate the use of concept mapping as measurament and as assessments tool in for
students understanding of Biology syllabus in Malaysia High School.
By making this possible, an investigation of the use of concept mapping is done by the
participation of hundred students (preservice teachers) that attend in Biology Teaching
Methods course. 16 groups of four students and 12 groups of three students make up 28 group
overall that given a 4 hours lecture about Biology syllabus and three hours lecture in
expressing their concept mapping by aided of the lecturer.
The evaluation done by using scoring system based on Wallace and Mintzes (1990).
Specific weightage has set up for evaluation of the concept mapping. The criteria involves
inclusion of the topics, proposition of the link, levels of hierarchy, scientific skills and values.
Overall, this study showed how the concept mapping can be use in teaching and
learning for better understanding in delivering the knowledge to the students. The authors
want this concept mapping to be implemented for the next preservice teachers to be use as
teaching source.

OPINION AND COMMENTS

As stated in this article, concept mapping viewed as representation of knowledge by
joining important keys and needed facts and their overall general topic. After reading this
srticle, I agreed that by using concept mapping can enhance the ability of generating ideas and
delivering knowledge better compared to use the plain text.
This is because by only joining the link and interaction between small keypoints in a
certain contents can help me elaborate the point better and the process of memorizing the facts
in certain topic become easier. To use concept mapping, one must have the understanding in
the overall topic. The genaral idea of the important facts in the topic also must be understood
so that we know how to apply concept mapping and what should be included or excluded
from concept mapping.
In my opinion, concept mapping is a suitable way to learn and teach Biology for high
school students as it covers all the important point in a piece of page. Clearly state that
Biology is a very important subject that contains a very vary and a very wide scope of
contents. So, the aim of this study as stated in the article was to reveals the misunderstanding
and misconception among preservice teachers in understanding the Biology form four and
form five syllabus. As the concept of mind mapping is compact all the important points in a
page, we can easily detect the lacking and misunderstanding of the concept as the concept
mapping itself emphasize about the comparison, hierachy and also the specification.
By using concept mapping as measuring tool to measure the level of understanding
among preservice teachers is a great idea for assess the level of understanding in order to
produce preservice teacher that can deliver the contents of the syllabus well. As showed in
Table 2 in the article attached, the wightage of this study focussed on several importants
ascpect of the content in a certain mind map. By having this specific orders of weightage,
preservice teachers can actually know what should be include in the mind map. This will
prevent the lacking or missing of the contents.
This showed that preservice teachers understanding can increase by using concept
mapping. I agreed that by using concept mapping can increase the understanding of student in
learning and teaching Biology. A part from that, in order to apply the concept mapping
precisely, we need to have a very powerful understanding in subject matter. Good elaboration
of the importants keypoints also needed to major in teaching biology.

CONCLUSION
As the conclusion, Biology preservice teachers should master the usage of concept
mapping in teaching and later to delivering the knowledge to the high school students.
Malaysia preservice teacher should apply the concept mapping in learning and teaching as
concept mapping can help us to present the idea correctly, can improve the brainstorming
among students, and also concept mapping can be also be used in other field; not only for
education matters and also can easily detect the misconception in the process of learning and
teaching so that the misconception can easily improved.

REFERENCE

Ali, M., & Ismail, Z. (2008). Facilitating Malaysian Student Teachers' Understanding of the
Biology Syllabus through Concept Mapping. Journal of Science and Mathematics
Education in South East Asia, 43-55.