Connecting Prior Knowledge Effective teachers start with the learner in mind.

Our first move in designing lessons and choosing teaching strategies should be to consider what's already inside the learner's head as they walk into our classroom.

This is because cognitive scientists agree that learning is connecting new knowledge to previously existing knowledge.

In some ways, it's that simple and that complicated.

In the last session we talked about working memory as the gateway to long-term memory.

What is attended to and processed in working memory is essential for making permanent memories to use later.

For this session, we will talk about the importance of what is already in our students memories, their prior knowledge, beliefs and skills, and the ways they influence ongoing learning.

Lee Shulman and his book, The Wisdom of Practice, speaks eloquently to inside out teaching and connected learning.

He writes, to prompt learning, you've got to begin with the process of going from inside out.

The first influence on new learning is not what teachers do pedagogically but the learning that's already inside the learner.

Any new learning must, in some fashion, connect with what learners already know.

Prior knowledge is one of the most influential factors in student learning because new information is processed through the lens of what they already know, believe, and can do.

Our students are not blank slates as they walk into our classrooms.

They come with their own concepts, ideas, beliefs, values, theories, and attitudes gained through previous schooling and daily life.

And this head full of previous learning profoundly influences new learning.

That's why ascertaining, activating, and linking to our students prior knowledge is so key to effective learning.

Please notice that we mentioned beliefs as part of what our students come into our classrooms possessing.

Because what a student believes about themselves as a learner and about learning itself can greatly influence how effectively they learn or not.

This is an idea we'll delve into during week two about mindsets.

Let's talk more now about prior knowledge and how it can help or hinder learning.

If I say the word cardinal, what comes to mind for you? Some of you probably thought of a bright red bird, the state bird of Indiana, others a religious figure, especially if you are catholic.

If you're a sports minded person, you might have imagined a baseball team from Saint Louis.

A few of you, mathematicians, most likely, might have conjured the concept of cardinal numbers.

These same eight letters can mean such different things to different people depending upon our prior knowledge and experiences.

Our comprehension and sense making of the world around us in basic ways is prior knowledge dependent.

Now consider this phrase, the notes were sour because the seam split.

Does this sentence make sense to you? Probably not.

What about now? Again, for most of you the picture and word caused the concept bagpipe to be retrieved from your memory.

This then helped you make sense of that sentence.

However, if you don't know what a bagpipe is or what a sour note might be, the sentence still may not make sense.

Now let's look at one more example of how having access to relevant knowledge influences comprehension and understanding as well as memory formation and recall.

It's from a classic study done by Bransford and Johnson in 1972.

We're going to show on the screen a short paragraph.

Please spend a few moments reading it.

Does it make sense to you? Probably not.

Most people find this passage unintelligible or, at the least, confusing.

Now look at the sketch that next appears on the screen.

This sketch is of a man serenading his girlfriend as she leans out of the window of her sixth floor apartment.

The man used balloons to float the speaker for his microphone up to her so she could hear him sing.

Now please read the passage again.

Now does it make sense to you? Probably so.

Bransford and Johnson found that without seeing the sketch, people remembered very little about the story later.

Mainly because they couldn't comprehend it in a way that linked to their prior knowledge.

For those people given the sketch ahead of time, it was not only more comprehensible, but when tested later they remembered much more about the story.

So what's the point of these examples? If our students have appropriate, retrievable, and accurate prior knowledge to link new knowledge to, learning will happen more readily and will stick in enduring ways.

This is why figuring out our students prior knowledge is so important to effective teaching.

It's also why choosing readings and problems that can link in some fashion to our students prior knowledge and skills is equally important.

If readings contain vocabulary or problems require analytical skills not possessed by a learner, then new learning will be very difficult to happen for two reasons.

The first is that there will be nothing to link to and the second is that cognitive load will likely increase and learning then becomes even more compromised.

Sometimes too the prior knowledge of our students can be misconceived.

They may have already existing inaccurate facts, ideas, stereotypes, or faulty models and theories about how the world works that they've developed from their own lived lives.

This means their learning and certain context may be hindered or even prevented depending on the nature of their misconceptions and how robust those misconceptions are.

For examples of these misconceptions in different subjects and to learn more about them, please see the teaching strategies section of our MOOC under misconceptions for a variety of suggestions and ideas about how to translate the learning concepts in this section into teaching strategies for your classrooms.

Meaningful learning is linking new information and knowledge to already existing conceptual knowledge and skill routines in our memory.

Without relevant and accurate prior knowledge and skills, subsequent learning tends to be hindered because learners might ignore, resist, discount, or even not recognize important new information and evidence that conflicts with existing knowledge.

And this can vary from learner to learner in different contexts.

Our students often need help accessing their relevant prior knowledge.

Teachers who are aware of their students existing prior knowledge, whether accurate or not, can design instruction to connect new information more effectively with what they already know.

No surprise, our students learning environment are accurately sensitive to the individual differences among the learners in it, especially with regard to their prior knowledge and skills.

Please see our teaching strategy section under prior knowledge to learn about ways to translate the concepts in this section into learning designs for your classroom.

As David Ausubel wrote in one of the first textbooks written about cognitive science in 1978, the most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows.

Ascertain this and teach accordingly.

Our next session will focus on how we can help our students make durable memories in ways they can use and apply them when needed later.