Concept Mapping Tool in Earth and Space Science Understanding and Retention among Grade 9 Students

Students in Earth and Space experience have limited influence on their conceptual understanding. Retention too has been less considered caused by improper learning outcome assessment. Understanding and retention are significant to be achieved as they are tied to educational success. Teachers conducted remedial classes because students just tend to memorize content to get task done easily. Hence, 7 E’s module with concept mapping used as an evaluation tool was also crafted to address retention and understanding of Grade 9 students of Arizona High School, Midsayap, Cotabato. A non-comparative quasi-experimental research design was employed. In this design, single-blind design was employed to the two classes, in which only the data from 30 of them undergone statistical treatment. To determine the level of understanding and retention, frequency was also used. To determine if there was a significant difference between pretest and post-test scores-test was used and for the six cognitive process domains, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Findings showed that in the level of students’ retention, more students achieved very satisfactory and outstanding performance than Space topic. Meanwhile, understanding across six cognitive process skills has significant difference. Results also that there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores. This highlights that concept mapping can enhance understanding and retention not just as teaching strategy but could also be used as evaluation tool. It further revealed that among the six cognitive process domains, evaluating skills has the highest mean indicating that the skill was more developed.