The opportunity for students to become aware of their own learning is provided
through the use of Concept Cartoons and Concept Maps, each of which encourage the
eliciting of prior knowledge and misconceptions enabling students to focus on their own
understanding. The possible advantage of Concept Maps is that prior knowledge may not
have been anticipated by the teacher and the extent of knowledge revealed may be greater or
less than expected. A disadvantage however is that the absence of misconceptions being
revealed in a Concept Map does not necessarily indicate that a learner’s understanding is
free of misconceptions. Concept Cartoons have the advantage of directly addressing
potential misconceptions, as identified in the research literature, but at the cost of notenabling learners to reveal the depth or breadth of their understandings. By highlighting and
examining these differences in the prior knowledge that each technique elicits it is expected
that this research will contribute to helping teachers become aware of the sort of additional
support to provide for effective learning to be undertaken.