This is not a strong paper (19 page PDF) but I like (part of) the topic, which is why it's here. This article is based on Jerome Bruner's idea "that when students understand the schematic structure of the subject matter first, it will be easier for them to understand the whole topic afterwards" (I think this is what they mean, but it's not clear). It then runs through a longish list of structural representations, for example, hierarchies (which the paper calls 'word maps') and Venn Diagrams (it bothers me that the carnivore-omnivore labeling (fig. 9) is wrong). The empirical component of the paper is an analysis of what the authors call the "NESVL method", based on these principles (we are never told what NESVL stands for), but the real value is the depiction of structure in science teaching (which would have made a compelling study, perhaps updating this work, if the authors had focused on it).
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