This study investigated the assumption that students use instructional objectives as advance organizers. This assumption, developed by D. Ausubel (1968), is appealing to instructors, but has been difficult to test experimentally. Participants in this study were 8 teachers from 4 different ethnic groups applying the design in 2 lessons for 4 subjects taught in rural and urban schools to 492 students aged 13 to 19 years. Students in the experimental condition were given four instructional objectives at the start of each class, and asked to mark the one objective not covered at the end of each session. The inability to identity that an instructional objective was not used in the lesson was taken as evidence that the student did not use the objective as an advance organizer. Results show that 29.8% of students with the best recall ability (students who were able to remember all four objectives) could not tell which objective was not used, and therefore did not use the objectives as a conscious strategy for advance organization of the lesson material. (Contains 2 tables and 40 references.) (SLD)