as part of my ph.d. work in the area of refined concept map (RCM) in biology education, i am working on analyzing the school textbooks of 8, 9, 11 standards on the domain of cell biology. i mapped the domain of each 3 standards using the RCM method i.e. using a fixed and a minimal set of relation names for mapping the concepts. the hypothesis of the study was that even if the complexity in the domain increases with an increase in the number of concepts, but the relation names that provide meaning to these concepts would be a fixed and a minimal set. the following is a brief summary of the results:
std. no. of concepts no. of relation names
8 75 11
9 195 16
11 500 15
the most widely used relation names are: consists of, includes, comprised of, surrounded by, located in, has function, has attribute.
i am also analyzing the other components involved, such as the frequency of relation names, the no. of concepts connected to specific relation names, etc. across all the 3 standards.
it is really an interesting and exciting exercise which i enjoy working on.
Posted by Meena Kharatmal 
