I recently shared a summary of Simonsmeier et al., (2022) work suggesting that pupil’s prior knowledge is a critical factor for teaching and accounts for about a third of the variance in learning outcomes. On the back of summarising that …
In spite (or because) of the complex relation between prior knowledge and learning, however, assessing learners’ prior knowledge before teaching them something new remains of utmost importance. Dr Garvin Brod The importance of prior knowledge can not be underplayed. Previously …
Pupils don’t learn what you teach them. Sarah Cottingham Pupils learn their own interpretation of what you teach them – based on what they already know. That is, pupils attend to what they think is important based on what they …
After posting a review of Gupta et al. (2021) and their summary conclusion that retrieval was “a potent learning tool across most if not all levels of prior content mastery,” co-author Dr Steven Pan signposted a second paper with a …
In 1968, American psychologist David Ausubel wrote an article in which he stated that the most influential factor for learning new things is “what the learner already knows.” In other words: prior knowledge. According to him, the new things that we …
