Cross-National Variations in Students’ Diagrammatic Representations of Biological Taxonomy

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-605-5_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

biological taxonomy; diagrammatic representation; cross-national study

Abstract

This study investigates cross-national variations in college students’ diagrammatic representations of biological taxonomy, focusing on how learners from different sociocultural backgrounds construct visual structures to convey hierarchical relationships. A total of 121 college students from Taiwan (n = 60) and Indonesia (n = 61) participated in a diagrammatic task in which they were asked to design an instructional representation of the five biological kingdoms for Grade 7 students. The collected drawings were coded into six structural types—Pictorial, List, Ring, Interaction, Evolution, and Tree—and further categorized as hierarchical or non-hierarchical representations. Quantitative analysis revealed significant differences between the two groups. Indonesian students demonstrated a strong preference for hierarchical tree structures, whereas Taiwanese students predominantly adopted non-hierarchical forms. A chi-square test confirmed that nationality was a significant factor influencing representational structure, while academic major showed no significant effect. These findings suggest that diagrammatic representations are shaped not only by disciplinary knowledge but also by sociocultural factors, including prior exposure to textbook conventions. The study highlights the role of representational familiarity in guiding students’ design choices and suggests that visual representations in science are culturally situated rather than universally constructed. Implications are discussed for science education and teacher preparation, particularly in raising awareness of how instructional representations may reflect implicit cultural norms and influence students’ understanding of scientific concepts.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yun-Ping Ge
AU  - Jonathan Davidson
AU  - Thu Huynh
AU  - Dieu-Huy Lu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/07
TI  - Cross-National Variations in Students’ Diagrammatic Representations of Biological Taxonomy
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Primary Education (ICOPE 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 5
EP  - 11
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-605-5_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-605-5_2
ID  - Ge2026
ER  -