In the context of China's social transformation and educational reform, addressing the problems of fragmented and ineffective learning in traditional teaching modes and enhancing students' academic levels and developing their comprehensive abilities through structured classroom learning have become critical issues in educational reform. The…

The metabolic versatility of bacteria is a source of learning difficulty for students in classical microbiology courses. To facilitate the learning process, the authors developed an advance organizer. It consists of a set of six diagrams of metabolic pathways describing the basic living requirements of several types of bacteria: energy, carbon…

Tests Ausubel's (1960) subsumption theory of learning in the context of children's use of causal and logical connectives. Predicts that the acquisition of prior cognitive structure organizers would facilitate the learning and retention of subsequently presented concepts and logical operations and lead to a decrease of syncretic reasoning and…

Grade 10 students were taught a hierarchy of intellectual skills in three different contexts: skills taught in isolation; additional verbal instructions provided; and skills taught in relation to a relevant anchoring idea. Results showed that use of the anchoring idea context enhances meaningful learning of complex skills. (Author/GK)

The effects on retention of adjunct questions either placed at the end of a passage or inserted after their respective paragraphs within the passage were examined. Both treatments led to superior retention of the previously questioned facts. The position of the adjunct questions did not differentially affect performance. (Author/BW)

Structured overviews can help students and teachers to clarify objectives in content reading. (KS)

Utilizes the information processing model of human memory to provide teachers with suggestions for improving the teaching-learning process. Briefly explains and specifies applications of major theoretical concepts: attention, active learning, meaningfulness, organization, advanced organizers, memory aids, overlearning, automatically, and…

Investigates the effects of an advance organizer lesson, presenting high-order science concepts and an elementary problem solving strategy for determining causal relations on children's use of operations of exclusion (as defined by Inhelder and Piaget, 1958). Results suggest that acceptable solutions to problems requiring the operations of…

Results obtained from the research were inconsistent, indicating no support for the thesis that objectives aid learning. Research recommendations are submitted, with conclusions drawn reflecting the positive attitudes toward presenting objectives. (JB)

Providing contextual cues leads to more effective learning than depth of semantic processing activity. However, the positive effects of contextual cues are reduced when the subject must search for the theme during the learning activity, as opposed to having it presented before the passage. (CP)

This working paper, which reviews the experimental literature on learning skills to provide background information to the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use), covers four areas: study skills, instructional development and design, cognitive psychology,…

The effects of visual, and verbal/visual, preorganizers and postorganizers on the learning of unfamiliar information were evaluated in an experimental study involving 153 community college students. Pre- and postorganizers were used in connection with a 20-minute lesson on the theory of communication. A 25-item, multiple-choice criterion test was…

In conjunction with oral instruction in social studies, students were assigned to one of five organizer treatment conditions. Treatment conditions consisted of an advance or a post organizer presented visually or orally. Results indicated that nonwritten cognitive organizers facilitated both the learning and the retention of oral instruction.…

A model is proposed for memory that stresses a distinction between episodic memory for encoded personal experience and semantic memory for abstractors and generalizations. Basically, the model holds that questions influence the nature of memory representations formed during instruction, and that memory representation controls the way in which…

Instead of urging content area teachers to teach reading skills, reading personnel should be providing them with prereading techniques designed to organize or provide experiences relevant to new concepts to be learned by students. Among the conclusions reached from a review of relevant research are that using multi-leveled textbooks in a classroom…