Can elementary students gather information from concept maps?

In this study, we investigated whether concept maps were used as often and as
effectively in elementary science and technology classrooms as recommended by the
National Ministry of Education (MEB) in the new curricula in Turkey. In the new
elementary science and technology curricula, the MEB provides a general concept map
for each unit. We used concept maps provided for the Light and Sound units for fourth,
fifth, and sixth grades as content to determine whether students were able to use concept
maps to gather information from them. Our analyses showed that most of the students
did not use the concept maps to answer the questions. Rather they used their own
knowledge and cognitive structures about light and sound to answer the questions.
Therefore, we concluded that students do not know how to read the concept maps and
gather knowledge from them. Also, we ran an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test to
explore whether grade level has an effect on students‟ performance in reading the
concept maps and gathering information from them. We found that grade level has a
significant effect on students‟ performance in using concept maps.