Exploration of Middle School Students’ Ideas of Fine Dust Issues Using Issue Concept Maps

This study introduces issue concept maps (IC map) as an instructional tool for exploring students’ idea about socio-scientific issues (SSI). By visualizing students’ ideas in two dimensions, context and occurrence, IC maps represent what kinds of ideas students have on the issues, and how their ideas change and connect. In the study, we implemented a SSI program on fine dust for 77 seventh graders and used IC maps to investigate how their ideas changed after the program. Students collaboratively constructed IC maps in groups before and after the program. Results show that the number of ideas written on IC maps significantly increased after the program from 92 to 254 ideas, indicating that the program contributed to enhancing students’ awareness about the issues in terms of its causes, effects, and countermeasures at various context levels. Students also presented a greater variety of types of connections among their ideas after the program.