Effects of a conceptually framed, problem/solution/effect graphic organizer on content comprehension and problem solving skills for seventh grade social studies students

Many students in inclusive classrooms are not able to identify and/or organize critical knowledge in social studies textbooks. This inability inhibits content understanding and prevents developing problem solving skills necessary to succeed. One strategy to help student understanding is the use of graphic organizers. Graphic organizers (GOs) are spatial representations that highlight important information and show relationships.; The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a GO that used a concept/attribute structure to frame the content, while overtly expressing relationships with a problem/solution/effect paradigm to increase content comprehension and strengthen problem solving skills.; Two intact seventh grade inclusive social studies classes participated in the study. The experimental group used the GO during instruction, while the control group used a note-taking strategy. Both groups were pre- and post tested for comprehension and problem solving skills. Two-factor repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) were used for all statistical analyses. Analyses revealed no statistical difference between groups on content vocabulary or concept acquisition. On the problem solving essay, however, the GO group statistically outperformed the notes group in their ability to apply content information. Also, a reiteration/summarization task was administered to both groups to test factual recall and knowledge of relationships. Results from a two-tailed t-test showed that the GO group statistically outperformed the notes group. In addition to quantitative measures, a teacher interview and student surveys were taken to triangulate the results.; The results from the comprehension measures are consistent with previous research on graphic organizers in that they equally support learning content vocabulary and concepts relative to note-taking. The important findings from this study indicate that framing GOs with hierarchical knowledge forms within a problem/solution/effect paradigm provides students with both an entree to the content by minimizing curriculum and ability barriers and serve as a concrete proxy for developing problem solving skills.