Determining the Effectiveness of Graphic Organizers - Research Paper Example

Determining the Effectiveness of Graphic Organizers Introduction Graphic organizers have become a significant part of the academic institutions. Routinely, a variety of graphic organizers are being used to educate students facing the problems of Learning Disabilities (LDs). Many students find it difficult to comprehend the academic topics as they are taught in the class. Study Purpose To highlight and comprehend the graphic organizers and their practical understanding but with comparative effectiveness, this piece of study is designed to serve this purpose. Study Justification The graphic organizers do not remain within the bounds of books. Nowadays, almost in every academic institution; they are frequently used. Additionally, expository terms and texts are mostly written in a vogue manner; additionally, many academic authors use sophisticated language that hinders many students to properly understand the exact meaning of the text. In this regard, it becomes highly necessary to understand and determine the effectiveness of graphic organizers. Research Questions 1. What is an academic performance difference that is provided by the graphic organizers? 2. What makes graphic organizers to be more effective? Hypothesis Graphic organizers have been effective in diminishing the impacts of learning disabilities and at the same time upgrade the academic performance of the students. Null Hypothesis Learning disabilities do not remain the same regardless whether semantic mapping or cognitive mapping is utilized. Variables There exist two types of variables-independent and dependent variable. The independent variable is one that does not depend on the function of any other variable, and the opposite is true about the dependent variable. In this research proposal, they are: Independent variable = cognitive mapping or semantic mapping Dependent variable= Learning disabilities Assumptions 1. Cognitive and semantic mapping work against learning disabilities and reduce their impacts. 2. They perform their function to upgrade the academic performance of students. Definition of terms Graphic organizers Graphic organizers are visual and spatial displays making clear relationships between related facts and concepts more apparent (Gijaria, et al., 2007). Cognitive Mapping Cognitive mapping facilitates developing significant ideas and relationships by employing arrows, spatial arrangements and lines with an aim of evaluating and understanding a particular text, context structure or a relationship between different concepts (Darch & Eaves, 1986). Semantic Feature Analysis Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) is constructed in a way to enabling students to identify and comprehend relevant but pertinent pieces of information from lecture or text. The shape of matrix is used to present conceptual characteristics; and a matrix relationship uses vocabulary for its development, which represents the coordinate concepts installed at the top of the matrix and the vocabulary provides the subordinate concepts along the side (Bos & Anders, 1990). Semantic Mapping Semantic mapping enables students to highlight significant pieces of information from a lecture of text. In addition, students can pinpoint the isolated parts of information from the lecture of text after identifying the main ideas supporting the main theme of the concept. In this way, semantic mapping is highly relevant to make better reading sense (Little &Box, 2011, p.27). Syntactic/Semantic Feature Analysis Syntactic/ Semantic Feature Analysis (SSFA) do not much differ from the concept of SFA. However, some difference such as adding the cloze-type sentences, for which matrix provides its base, are included to in the SSFA concept. In this concept, cloze sentences comprise of empty spaces. And, the empty spaces are to be filled up by the students by comprehending the context of the sentence and the SFA matrix. Visual Display Using computational manner, the visual displays are constructed in a way to represent concepts, relationships or facts spatially. In the visual display, relationships between concepts and facts are incorporated by making them apparent through their location on the display. Literature Review To learn requires many conceptual and reading skills. And, there are a considerable number of students who face many academic challenges. Among them, they include comprehending expository text, conceptual reading and understanding, textual and linguistic depictions of the concepts bring more challenges for students. In addition, Jiang & Grabe (2007, p.34) contend that many students assume that in almost all reading material exists structures. For many students to develop a sense properly and fully comprehending the structural understanding of reading material requires much skillful reading and comprehending skills. Thereby, these students are identified as having Learning Difficulties (LDs). Due to these LDs, many students do not perform well academically. They become confused over the contextual and structural depiction and understanding of text or content as they are required to read and comprehend. And, this confusion negatively affects on many areas of academic performance; such as reading, writing, comprehending, summarizing skills. Thereby, they become insufficient to cater the needs of such students. Undoubtedly, many education authors would not disagree with the significance of these skills for students; the entire academic performance along with conceptual maturity and growth considerably depend on the use of these skills. The absence of such skills would bring negative academic performance; not only in a class room, but also while individually reading, students would become unable to properly and appropriately utilize the content or text to increase its level of academic learning. Within this context, Hughes, Maccini & Gagnon (2003) contend that students receiving education at the upper-elementary, and intermediate levels comparatively, are provided less individual attention than the students receiving education at the primary level. Additionally, (Kim et al., 2004) have opined that learning through expository text or content is a challenging task for many students particularly students who are asked to do the reading assignments such as fiction. Numerous educational researchers have not raised their concerns over the effectiveness of graphic organizers. For example, Kim et al., (2004) have carried out extensive research over the topic and its effectiveness; for that purpose, they have thoroughly taken into account the professional literature review from the year of 1963 to 2001. From this extensive literature review over the graphic organizers and their comparative effectiveness with the standardized reading, comprehending measures, they have developed a total of 21 groups design intervention studies meeting the inclusion criteria in the synthesis. Within their work, they have provided the entire set of mechanism that has been used to carry out the research. For instance, they have set a sample in which students in K-12 have been identified as subjects. Additionally, certain learning disabilities have also pinpointed in order to highlight the possible difference that can be obtained from the comparative analysis from prior and post evaluation of tests. In all, their results clearly suggest that the students having learning disabilities prior to test treatment, in which graphic organizers have been used, has highlighted improved reading comprehension aggregately for students facing the problems of learning disabilities. Additionally, Simmons et al., (1988) compares the effectiveness of three instructional procedures for developing First Language sixth graders’ retention and comprehension of science content: the use of teacher-developed post-organizers, the utilization of teacher-constructed advance organizers, and the application of the traditional form of instruction. Simmons et al. (1988) uses the graphic organizers in the study depicting the hierarchy of information within the content or passage and their relationships of individual facts within the hierarchy, but not the structure of discourse of the text. The subsequent results indicate that there are no major differences on daily probe measures among all three groups. However, subjects, who has obtained advance graphic organizers treatment outshines significantly to those students who received the post-organizer treatment. Methodology Methodology is a systematic approach to research. It determines and explains the entire method to carry out the work of research. In determining what should be included and what should not be included, the process of methodology obtains guidance from the research objectives and thesis statement. It is the purpose and objective of research questions that are going to be satisfied with the use an appropriate methodology. For that purpose, following are the fundamental parts of methodology. Population Population can be defined as a group that has some similarities or similar characteristics. And, these similar characteristics can be identified as an age, environment, culture, people working in a particular organization, people belonging to different social or economic classes. They all or some of them can be used to determine population. Thereby, some similar characteristics are fundamental to pinpoint and determine a sample. A sample can be any determined number of people that can be used to represent the entire set of population. Additionally, to determine a representative sample within a population can be carried out on the basis of research objectives. In this research work, the community of students can be identified as population. In order to select a representative sample, a stratified random sample method may be employed. In this sample selection method, population is divided into strata and a representative sample is determined and selected randomly from each stratum. For instance, in a survey of university graduates, a representative sample may be chosen by drawing 80 students from each of the senior and junior strata. By selecting 80 students from the junior and senior sections of university graduates, the representative sample will be completed as representing both sections of university graduates studying in the university. Experimental design Experimental design is defined as the planning process through which the objectives of a research study are achieved. The experimental design is determined in a systemic way to carry out the research work; and this research work is not performed except fulfilling the research objectives. However, experimental design is based on the below mentioned steps: 1. Determining the experimental unit: 2. Identifying the types of variables: 3. Providing the treatment structure: 4. Defining the design structure: This research work is taken to determining the effectiveness of graphic organizers. To evaluate and prove the effectiveness of graphic organizers, different articles are used to establish this fact and test the hypothesis simultaneously. Inferential analysis Inferential analysis determines whether a relationship exists between population and a sample. The inferential analysis may bring both negative and positive relationships between the sample and population. For example, learning disabilities are common issues with the students. And, they put negative impacts over the academic performance of the students besides increasing their frustration concerning to their aggregate academic performance. In this regard, if some students are taught with cognitive mapping and others are provided conceptual understanding with the use of the visual displays, the resulting effects would bring that conclusion that students getting concepts via different means, such as cognitive mapping or visual displays, their aggregate performance would considerably improve in comparison with the standardized method of learning, which is unable to work against the impacts of learnig disabilities. Works cited page Gajria, Meenakshi, Jitendra, Asha K., Sood, Sheetal & Sacks, Gabriell, “Improving Comprehension of Expository Text in Students with LD: A Research Synthesis,” Journal of Learning Disabilities 40.3 (2007): 210-225. Kim, Ae-Hwa, Vaughn, Sharon, Wanzek, Jeanne,& Wei, Shangjin” “Graphic Organizers and Their Effects on the Reading Comprehension of Students with LD: A Synthesis of Research.” Journal of Learning Disabilities 37.2 (2004) : 105-118. Little, David C, & Box, Jean Ann, ““The use of specific schema theory strategy-semantic mapping-to facilitate vocabulary development and comprehension for at-risk readers”, Reading Improvement,48, No. 1, pp.24-31. Darch, Craig, & Eaves, C RonaldVisual displays to increase comprehension of high school learning-disabled students. The Journal of Special Education, 20, (1986). 309-318 Hughes, C. A., Maccini, P., & Gagnon, J. C.. Interventions that positively impact the performance of students with learning disabilities in secondary general education classes. Learning Disabilities, 12, (2003) 101-111. Bos, C. S., & Anders, P. L.. Effects of interactive vocabulary instruction on the vocabulary learning and reading comprehension of junior-high learning disabled students. Learning Disability Quarterly, 13, (1990) 31 42. Jiang, Xiangying & Grabe, William “” Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues”, Reading in a Foreign Language, Vol. 19, No. 1,(2007). pp. 34-55. Simmons, D. C., Griffin, C. C., & Kameenui, E. J.. Effects of teacher-constructed pre and post-graphic organizer instruction on sixth-grade science students’ comprehension and recall. Journal of Educational Research, 82(1), (1988) 15–21. Read More