Investigating Application Validity of Concept Maps

To ensure the effective use of a concept map it needs to be validated. Two different types of concept map validity can be distinguished, referring to either the validity of the concept map’s content or to the applicability for its designated purpose. This paper concentrates on application validity and outlines an empirical investigation demonstrating a validation approach utilising Knowledge Space Theory. Problem solving behaviour was used as a criterion for application validition of a concept map on a subdomain of geometry. By deriving theoretically expectable answer patterns on geometry problems from a concept map and comparing it with empirically collected answer patterns, the concept map’s application validity could be investigated and proved.