Advance organizers
This site is completely under construction for Dr. Anderson's Educational Psychology 400 class at the University of Illinois. I will attempt to make a complete entry, as informative as possible by the end of this semester, December 2004. However, I appreciate any additions you may feel may fit at anytime.
'Advanced Organizers'
Using KWL as an Advance Organizer
Definitions
1. A "statement of inclusive concepts to introduce and sum up material that follows" (Woolfolk, 2001).
2. Cognitive instructional strategy used to promote the learning and retention of new information (Ausubel, 1960).
3. It is a method of bridging and linking old information with something new.
Text Definition
An advance organizer is information that is presented prior to learning and that can be used by the learner to organize and interpret new incoming information (Mayer, 2003).
History
Advanced organizers are a concept developed and systematically studied by David Ausubel in 1960. He was very influenced by the teachings of Jean Piaget (Geier, 1999). Ausubel has worked consistently to prove that advance organizers facilitate learning and much of his research has influenced others since the 1960s. However, throughout the history of using advance organizers, it is still undecided whether or not advance organizers fully promote learning or if other processes are more beneficial, but much of the research promotes the ability of advance organizers to be useful in improving levels of understanding and recall (Mayer, 2003).
Since the advent of advance organizers, research has been able to prove that these work best when there is no prior knowledge involved, because an advance organizer becomes the students prior knowledge before learning the new material. If prior knowledge is available, advance organizers do not work as well for these students (Mayer, 2003).
Ausubel's advance organizer can best be classified as a deductive method. Deductive methods or reasoning provide the rule to follow then the example leading to the correct answer or learning (Mayer, 2003). This is opposite from inductive methods or reasoning that provides the example to follow then the rule.
Advance organizers are also highly useful in the process of transferring knowledge. Because of the deductive reasoning, students are able to use the rule then the example for learning to occur. Mayer writes in his text, "...the effects of advance organizers should be most visible for tests that involve creative problem solving or transfer to new situations, because the advance organizer allows the learner to organize the material into a familiar structure" (Mayer, 2003).
Applications
"The mind arranges and stores information in an orderly fashion. New information about a concept is filed into an existing framework of categories called schemas that contains specific information about a concept. So, when prior knowledge is retrieved, this schema provides a framework on which to attach new knowledge"(Bromley, 1995). If no previous knowledge is available, advance organizers are used to give knowledge to the students in order for this framework to be followed and new information retained for recall and transfer.
Giving students a diagram before listening to a passage leads to better retention of material, recall was enhanced for conceptual information in the lesson (Mayer, 2003).
Advance organizers are used to provide support for new information. Woolfolk argued they can "direct your attention to what is important in the coming material; they highlight relationships among ideas that will be presented; and remind you of relevant information you already have" (2001, 288).
Advance organizers that serve to make appropriate prerequisite knowledge available to the learner by providing new information are called expository organizers. Advance organizers that serve to build external connections with existing knowledge that is relevant to the new information by reminding the learner about prior knowledge are called comparative organizers (Mayer, 2003, 128).
Examples and Types of advance organizers
1. Advance & Graphical Organizers
2. Expository - describe the new content.
3. Narrative - presents the new information in the form of a story to students.
4. Skimming - used to look over the new material and gain a basic overview.
5. Graphic organizer - visuals to set up or outline the new information.
6. Concept mapping
Personal Testimonies
I believe the usage of advance organizers, or graphic organizers, has increased recently. My middle school students use graphic organizers all the time for taking notes, learning new things/words/definitions, as well as a pre-writing tool. I like them because they seem to fool kids into thinking they are not doing a lot of writing, but in actuality they are and they are organizing it at the same time. Students these days are so visually stimulated that it makes it much easier to use than other methods. J. Cappa
Upon doing the research for advance organizers, I was unaware of just how often this method was used during my education. I have had numerous teachers begin a new text or new chapter by making us students aware of the overview of the text. This was usually followed by a discussion or brainstorming of concepts that we believed connected to the concept, all guided by the teacher so we were receiving accurate advance organizers. Using advance organizers is now another way in which I can learn and integrate material, and it will also be beneficial in my future career as an elementary school teacher. MJB
I was very surprised at the long list of advanced organizers. I have used, probably overly so, the KWL I had never seen the N added until I accessed the web site below. I have found in science with inquiry and large data gathering projects the KWL gives direction to the students and a focus to the project.
I am an English teacher who feels that advance organizers are essential to motivate students to read. It is so much more effective to use an advance organizer such as a discussion of Mardi Gras before reading Edgar Allen Poe's "Cask of Amontiallado" or using an excerpt of a WWII documentary to introduce Ryan Boudinot's "The Littlest Hitler" instead of depending on the Read and Quiz strategy that so many teachers of literature misuse. I understand that advance organizers serve a greater purpose, but as far as literature goes, they become an opportunity to motivate students to read independently. -- 11th grade teacher, Mahomet-Seymour High School
As a sixth grade teacher, I find advanced organizers a great help. We often use KWL before starting a new novel. Students are encouraged to tell what they already know and what they are wanting to learn. Many of them are surprised at what they already know about certain novels. We are reading "Tom Sawyer' right now and many of them are learning that you cannot depend on the film version following the text- the things they thought they knew are not present in the novel, often things that have been "romanticized" by Hollywood. We teach concept mapping and use it before almost all essay writing and encourage students to use such a method when writing for standardized testing. Nancy Meeker
I teach Middle School Language Arts, and use advanced organizers all the time. Students at this level are learning how to organize their thoughts and the advanced organizers serve as a kind of stepping stone to help them along the way. Creating organizers from scratch can be a bit daunting, but there is a lot of help available on the internet. Laura Candler has an amazing collection of graphic organizers on her website, and she is more than happy to share with anyone who is interested. Her website is especially helpful if you use Literature Circles in your classroom. Stacy Borkgren
I took a university course that used a system of advance organizers to do note taking. It was literally a fill-in-the-blank system where we were to glean the missing word or phrase from the professor's lecture. It seemed that the professor never followed the organizer and note taking became a complete disaster. --A. Sylvester
Regarding the above comment: I too took a university course where the teacher had a fill in the blank template for lectures. In my case, it really inhanced what I got out of the class. There was so much information in this science course. It was so helpful to be able to give my full attention to what the teacher was saying rather than scrambling to get the notes copied. Just like every teaching tool, the success depends on the teachers grasp of how to use it. ~V. Amen
Advanced organizers, as Ausubel described them, are *not* what Mayer and others are defining - this has been a misunderstanding that has been allowed to become "truth" in the field of education. An advanced organizer is *not* merely an organization chart or support given in advance of a lesson. Most of the testimonials above are NOT advanced organizers - they are just organizers that help students review the content they are studying
Ausubel's definition is that advanced organizers should not contain "to be learned content" and the information being presented should be at a higher "higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness" than the information to be learned (Ausubel,1963).
To clarify, the following *are* graphic organizers, but not advanced organizers because you are asking the student to provide knowledge about the *topic to be learned* - it is neither abstract, general, or inclusive of prior schema:
A KWL chart where students provide what they know about a topic already A concept map that outlines the new content A fill-in-the-blank note taking sheet that students fill-in as much as they can before beginning the lesson
These are all useful aids to learning, to be sure - but they do not prepare a student to retrieve prior schema and connect new knowledge to that schema. Here is a better example of an advanced organizer, from a study done by Ausubel and Fitzgerald in 1961:
Students were given a review of Christianity (in order to activate their schema for "religion") prior to studying a unit on Buddhism.
So for the unit on Tom Sawyer described above, helping students retrieve what they already know about Tom Sawyer is not activating a useful schema to attach the new ideas and concepts- it is retrieving a schema they already have about Tom Sawyer! Instead, a review of traveling may work (to help them retrieve schema for a journey) or perhaps a review of the themes from another travel story they had already read at a younger age, would qualify as an advanced organizer.
D. Harvey
My daughter pronounces words well, but reads slowly. Most of the time, she comprehends what she reads, but she really struggles with Social STudies assignments. After reading the sections involving outlining in the Mayer text, I was amazed that I had never thought of teaching her to outline the text in an effort to make it easier for her to understand. In looking back through her schooling, I cannot recall a time when these students were taught how to outline a text. Its a shame that this topic is not given more focus in the younger grades of our district. - M Foshee
I use advanced organizers in many subject areas. The KWL chart is the most effective when trying to engage the learner with a new topic. Students work individually or as a team to discuss what is known about the topic. Many times, kids bounce their thoughts and ideas off of one another. Next, the student thinks about want to know about the topic to set some goals for instruction. The final step of the KWL allows for reflection of what was learned after instruction. I always keep the chart displayed in the room for students to reflect on while we they learning. S. Nottoli
Helpful Websites and Studies
1. Creating Advance Organizers
2. Research
3. Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
Critics
Although many find advance organizers to be a useful tool for teaching students new concepts when they do not have previous knowledge of a concept, there are those who feel that advance organizers are not beneficial, especially to students who have a good understanding of concepts and do come with previous knowledge. Although it is seen that advance organizers do not benefit these good students, they may benefit slower learners and those that do not have a wide knowledge of topics available to them (Mayer, 2003).
References
Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 267-272.
Bromley, K., Irwin-DeVitis, & Modlo, M. (1995). Graphic Organizers. Scholastic Professional Books: New York.
Geier, D. (1999). Retrieved November 11, 2004, from http://home.earthlink.net/~dougary/ITEC_800/final_project/ausubel.htm.
Mayer, R. (2003) Learning and Instruction. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Mayer, R. (2002). The Promise of Educational Psychology. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Woolfolk, A. (2001). Educational Psychology, 8th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.