Aix-J VOLUME 2 NUMBER 1

Auto-monitoring: theoretical touchstone or
circular catch-all?

Nick Hammond

CTI Centre for Psychology, University of York, UK

Until I read Ray McAleese's paper, I perhaps had a rather simplistic psychologist's view of
concept mapping. It was, I felt, a technique - one of several - that helped learners to articulate
their burgeoning understanding of some topic, providing a canvas on which to record, expand
and manipulate their knowledge. The activities involved in concept mapping could be linked
to well-known psychological principles of understanding, memorization and learning: effort,
elaboration and depth of processing; generation and enactment effects; encoding specificity
and encoding variability; the distinctions between explicit and implicit representations; meta-
cognitive strategies and reflection, and so forth (Hammond 1993). These psychological
underpinnings, while not in any sense providing an integrated 'theory' of concept mapping,
give a view of when and why the use of concept mapping might be effective in some situa-
tions and not in others, and how different concept mapping tools differ in the claims they are
making about their educational use (Trapp, Reader and Hammond 1992).

The concept of auto-monitoring provides a related but higher-level perspective. Thus, as
McAleese argues, it links the areas of reflection, meta-cognition and concept mapping. It also
provides a process view of the stages involved in concept mapping (McAleese, Figure 2).
There is perhaps some theoretical leverage here. (McAleese wisely steers clear of the tempt-
ing but fallacious argument that maps are good for learning because they reflect structures in
the head in some way - this fallacy is analysed by McKendree and Reader 1994.) However,
McAleese is claiming more than this: it is not just that concept mapping can be a rather
effective way of learning because it requires explication and reflection; the claim (as I
understand it) is that concept mapping helps students develop auto-monitoring techniques and
so enhance their critical thinking skills. While acknowledging that this might be the case, I
have yet to see either any evidence or a persuasive theoretical argument that supports it. There
have, after all, been many contenders for this educational equivalent of the philosopher's
stone, from Latin grammar to Logo programming. Whether or not concept mapping does
assist in the development of thinking skills (over and above providing a specific technique for
helping lay out one's knowledge) is still an open empirical question.

It is here that I have a slightly uncomfortable feeling of circularity. To simplify the argument:
critical thinking skills depend substantially on reflection, self-monitoring and gaining an
overview, in short on auto-monitoring; concept mapping is a set of activities which both
requires and develops auto-monitoring; therefore concept mapping develops critical thinking
skills. But is the concept of auto-monitoring as yet sufficiently well-defined or robust to serve
as the bridge? The flaw is that none of these three concepts (thinking skills, auto-monitoring
or concept mapping) is unitary, and the links between them are strictly hypothetical. Thinking
involves a complex amalgam of different skills, which have to be appropriately mobilized
(implicitly or explicitly), depending on the situation. As McAleese points out, auto-monitor-
ing as an 'executive control' is likely to involve a range of mental procedures. And concept

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David Jonassen and Rose Marra Mindtoolsfor representing knowledge

mapping supports a diverse range of learning and comprehension tasks. The hypothesis is
therefore a challenging one, though not yet proven. But perhaps I have gone further than
McAleese is claiming. I am certainly happy with his view of auto-monitoring as a 'learning
arena' in which the learner can be aware of and manipulate learning activities.

References
Hammond, N.V. (1993), 'Learning with hypertext: problems, principles and prospects', in
McKnight, C., Dillon, A. and Richardson, J. (eds), Hypertext: A Psychological Perspective,
Chichester, Ellis Horwood.

McKendree, J. and Reader, W. (1994). 'The "homeopathic fallacy" in hypertext: misconcep-
tions of psychology in design of computer courseware', ALT News (in press).

Trapp, A.L., Reader, W. and Hammond, N.V. (1992), 'Tools for knowledge mapping: a
framework for understanding' in Brusilovsky, P. and Stefanuk, V. (eds), East-West Conference
on Emerging Technologies in Education, Moscow, April.

Concept mapping and other formalisms as
Mindtools for representing knowledge

David H. Jonassen* and Rose M. Marra**

* Pennsylvania State University and **AT&T, USA

Introduction

We seek to provide an alternative theoretical perspective on concept mapping (a formalism
for representing structural knowledge) to that provided by Ray McAleese in this issue of ALT-J
(auto-monitoring). We begin with an overview of concept maps as a means of describing a
learner's knowledge constructs, and then discuss a broader class of tools, Mindtools, of which
concept maps are a member. We proceed by defining Mindtools as formalisms for represent-
ing knowledge, and further elaborate on concept maps as a formalism for representing a
particular kind of knowledge: structural knowledge. We then address McAleese's use of the
term auto-monitoring and some of the steps in his model of concept maps. Finally, we
describe some limitations of concept mapping as a formalism and as a cognitive learning
strategy.

Concept maps, both in how they are used and theoretically based, touch some of the central
elements of instructional technology and learning. Concept maps address the critical issue of
how we organize our knowledge structures within and between domains. They, in some sense,
model how we represent and apply knowledge. Assuming that instructional technology, as a
field, has a goal of being able systematically to make instruction more effective, then tools

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