Reference:

Anna-Mari Rusanen, Otto Lappi, Timo Honkela, and Mikael Nederström. Conceptual coherence in philosophy education - visualizing initial conceptions of philosophy students with self-organizing maps. In B. C. Love, K. McRae, and V. M. Sloutsky, editors, Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pages pp. 64–70, Austin, TX, 2008. Cognitive Science Society.

Abstract:

We present a framework for research on coherence of student conceptions in philosophy education. Commonsense conceptions of philosophical novices were studied. Students of a Finnish upper secondary school with no prior background in philosophy were asked to evaluate statements on conceptual issues in the domains of philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. The results were analyzedf and visualized with Kohonen self-organizing-maps (SOM), enabling us to identify clusters of students and questions with similar response patterns. The results are interpreted in terms of students’ ontological commitments.

Suggested BibTeX entry:

@inproceedings{CogSci08,
    address = {Austin, TX},
    author = {Anna-Mari Rusanen and Otto Lappi and Timo Honkela and Mikael Nederstr{\"{o}}m},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society},
    editor = {B. C. Love and K. McRae and V. M. Sloutsky},
    pages = {pp. 64-70},
    publisher = {Cognitive Science Society},
    title = {Conceptual Coherence in Philosophy Education - Visualizing Initial Conceptions of Philosophy Students with Self-Organizing Maps},
    year = {2008},
}