Use of Concept Maps in Teaching Pedagogy

This article deals with the concept mapping method. The method has not yet received much attention in educational publications in the Czech language. The authors describe principles, functions, advantages and limitations of this method and discuss its use in different areas. Use of concept mapping in educational situations is demonstrated on concept maps made by students of Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education during a course on „Authority in Education“. At the beginning of the course, students learned about the concept mapping method and created their first concept map with key concept „teacher authority“. During the course, they studied authority in education and discussed about their first concept maps with the teacher and other students. At the end of the course, the students tried to improve their maps. The concept map helped the students to represent the complexity of the studied issue very clearly. The students said that they were going to use concept mapping in their further study and classwork with children. The authors show the problematic aspects of creating the maps and also examples of (in)appropriately chosen concepts and (cross-)links between them.