reaching a highest degree of explicit knowledge representation[9, 6].
This knowledge organization (KO) approach helps in building a frame-
work for curriculum development, and also to understand the transforma-
tion (conceptual change) of novice into an expert. Curriculum designed
using KO approach follows a principled disambiguous approach, which is
used by the experts in their respective domains. Incorporating the princi-
pled/logical approach is very essential to transform a novice into an expert,
which we assume, is the goal of education. Based on a comparison of a
novice with an expert[2], studies have shown that an experts’ knowledge
structure is coherent, economical and tightly integrated, while a novice’s
knowledge structure is often inconsistent, ambiguous, and loosely orga-
nized. While attempting to organize knowledge, an expert starts with the
core concepts, however a novice starts to organize the knowledge from pe-
riphery. The approach followed by an expert is principled i.e. logical, which
is not the case with a novice.
Based on these assumptions we began to employ the basic concepts
of knowledge representation (KR) and its possible use in the current en-
deavor. It was noted by Fisher[5] that KR helps students in order to learn
better. The following is a summary of the arguments given by Fisher for
using KR approach in science education. The act of creating an organized
structure of ideas on paper or on a computer helps in creating a knowl-
edge structure in the mind. KR helps in making the implicit (often fuzzy)
knowledge into an explicit and precise knowledge. It incorporates cognitive
and metacognitive skills, thus occurs meaning-making. KR helps students
to make finer discriminations between ideas and helps to organize better.
The more one practices the better one becomes at organizing and relating
concepts. Structural (organized, semantic) knowledge is essential to assim-
ilate, recall and comprehend. Structural knowledge is essential to problem
solving. A collaborative task occurs on the discussions about the meanings
of concepts and the relations between the students. It has also been noted
that there exists significant differences between the structural knowledge
of novices and experts, and hence for novices a natural part of learning is
to work on their structural knowledge to make it more expert-like.
Many educational researchers have found it useful to adopt a network
representation format for explicitly representing knowledge structure. There