The trusty spider diagram: it might be old school, but it is still seen frequently in classroom settings for mapping out knowledge of just about any kind. Identifying key facts, jotting down ideas, showing what students already know - the spider diagram appears to be able to do it all.

But how well does the spider diagram work when it comes to helping students do all this? Usually, it’s pretty poor at it. Which is why we started using thinking maps instead.

Part of what we are trying to do as teachers is help pupils to understand how new information relates to what they have learned previously, or how it fits more broadly into the wider context of a topic or subject.

As subject experts, teachers already understand where information fits in the grand scheme of things. Yet these same connections will only be obvious to students if we have explicitly provided them with enough insight into how the information is organised.

In The Blackwell Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology (1994), psychologist Michael Eysenck explains that “where the information being learned has a framework or structure that can be used to organise both the learning and the retrieval then memory is often considerably improved”.

Essentially, if we can take care of some of that organisation for students, they will be free to focus more of their attention on asking questions and clarifying their thinking, which will ultimately improve their learning.

At our school, we know that students of all ages benefit from highly-structured visual tools that model expert thinking and show the relationships between content, but the models we were using were diverse: for example, a teacher in English using a storyboard, a maths teacher using a flow chart and a science teacher using a spider diagram.

We acknowledged that this could be confusing for pupils and that using a standard method across the school would have multiple benefits, not least sparing them the effort of trying to work out which model they were using and how to use it. But which method was the best?

A scaffold for learning

After some research, we settled on a “thinking maps” approach. Hyerle and Alper (2011) state: “Thinking maps serve as a device for mediating thinking, listening, speaking, reading, writing, problem solving and acquiring new knowledge.”

Essentially, there are eight different thinking maps that each correspond to a different thinking process. For example, a tree map is used for classification, whereas a flow map is used to describe process, and a multi-flow map is used to carefully consider the causes and impacts of an event.

Long and Carlson (2011) suggest that “thinking maps are beneficial to students and teachers because they illustrate how students link ideas and concepts”.

But how does this work in practice? One of eight thinking maps is selected by the teacher, based on the needs of the task and the thinking required.

So if we wanted to look at the causes and impacts of an increase in tourism in geography, we would use a multi-flow map and box up different causes on the left hand side and draw arrows that lead to the central box - the increase in tourism. On the right hand side we would identify and describe the impacts, which would have arrows leading from the middle box towards each of them.

The map does not need to be equally weighted but the teacher can use colour coding to specify the impacts on the local community, individual businesses etc.

Similarly, pastoral staff have found this map useful when supporting students to consider the causes and consequences of their own behaviour. For younger learners, each cause box and impact box can be labelled to scaffold their analysis.

The simple structure of each map helps to make abstract concepts more concrete - students can easily get lost in long explanations of new content if they have limited prior understanding, but thinking maps ensure that the information is broken down clearly into bitesized pieces.

The maps are not only used to introduce new content, but also to review information that has been previously taught. Map-based tasks provide a scaffold to support students in the process of considering their ideas and getting them down onto paper. This saves time and ensures that every member of the class is using a similar method to organise their ideas, so that they make sense when we come to revisit them.

The approach seems to be working. Student questionnaires and observational data suggest that “learner anxiety” has been reduced, as students now feel confident using the familiar set of maps across subjects.

While it is difficult to isolate the integration of the maps as the key contributor to the improvements in attainment, we have found across all primary phases that there are correlations. For example, between: quality of written communication of longer mark answers when maps are evident during planning stages; quality of verbal communication during maths problem solving when maps have been used during initial teaching stages; and, at secondary, those students who independently used maps as part of their revision and their GCSE attainment.

For staff, the maps have the benefit of helping to break down barriers between curriculum areas and year groups: having a common framework makes it easier to share good practice across departments. Although some maps might be more appropriate in certain subjects, they are, on the whole, meaningfully transferable. This means that it is easier for staff to work collaboratively, building banks of models or planning explanations.

And there are benefits, too, for the multi-academy trust as a whole. When schools have a common language, it is surprising how many previously unapparent similarities and new opportunities to share great practice more widely begin to emerge.

Destination attainment

One big development that we have seen is the reduction of what we termed “private pedagogies” across the trust. Prior to all curriculum areas using the maps where appropriate, there were pockets of excellent practice - clear models for explaining difficult concepts and interesting visuals that students recognised and understood - but these sat in isolation. The maps have provided that whole-school language, enabling staff to share what has been working well regardless of content differences.

The maps also provide greater continuity of independent learning. Now, as students progress through each phase of schooling, they are more successful when working independently, because they have reliable structures that they become fluent in. They can use a map to organise their own thinking and develop accurate understanding.

Furthermore, as they grow in confidence and competence with using the maps, they can begin to self-select which map they use in the classroom - making a decision based on what they need to do and which map might be most appropriate.

Learning was of course taking place before we integrated the maps into our curriculum, but now our students have better frameworks for organising that learning, which improves their memory and retrieval. And that means that we are not only helping them to navigate their way through school more effectively, but are providing them with a map of knowledge that they can carry into life beyond the classroom.

As our knowledge of cognitive research develops, we will continue to search for ways to validly and reliably explore the value of the maps to our students and refine our practice to support our learners’ progress.

Hanna Miller is assistant head for teaching and learning across the Thinking Schools Academy Trust. She tweets @notesfromthebun

This article originally appeared in the 3 May 2019 issue under the headline “How to use maps to navigate through learning”