Principle 1: Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning.
What you can do in the classroom
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Examples |
Gauge prior knowledge |
- Administer low or no-stakes diagnostic to get a sense of student preparedness.
- Have students brainstorm a topic in groups to uncover beliefs, assumptions, and associations (e.g., "What do you already know about ..." or "What comes to mind when you think of ...").
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Activate accurate prior knowledge |
- Explicitly link new material to prior content from the course ("Where have we seen this before?").
- Use analogies to connect course content with everyday knowledge
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Address insufficient prior knowledge |
- Be sure to differentiate declarative (knowing what and why) from procedural (knowing how and when). Your students may know certain facts but may not know how to use them.
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Correct inaccurate knowledge |
- Have students make and test predictions. When evidence contradicts beliefs or expectations you can help them see source of error.
- Provide checklist or set of rules to help students determine if prior knowledge is relevant to a given problem or question.
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Adapted from How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (2010, Ambrose et al.)