One hundred forty-three students enrolled in an undergraduate chemistry class were rank ordered by their performance on a test of organizing ability. The median break technique was used to form two groups--good organizers (GO) and poor organizers (PO). Students within each of these groups were then randomly assigned to three treatments. Treatment…

In this third Occasional Paper in the Science series of The Science and Mathematics Education Information Analysis Center, Ausubel explains the nature and theoretical rationale of "organizers", abstract, general, and inclusive statements presented prior to new learning tasks to provide specific relevant anchoring ideas in the learner's…

This report provides an overview of concept and principle-learning studies and traces the theoretical basis for schema theory, which asserts that all knowledge is assimilated into a general cognitive framework. The procedures of an original study are described, which was designed to test the hypothesis that the inclusion of a "domain…

Advance organizers may fail to promote learning even though they are approximately related to the main learning experience and internally meaningful and logical. If they are to optimize the likelihood that new materials will be readily and properly subsumed, they must also be constructed to conform to the cognitive preparedness and scholastic…

This study was performed in order to test the author's notion that advance organizers operate because (1) they provide stable anchorage for concepts to be learned and (2) in order to operate they must be relatable by the student to the new material. To test this hypothesis the author constructed materials for each of ten treatments as defined by…

Research related to the use of advanced organizers is reviewed. Four hypotheses are generated including the notion that advanced organizers may be most effective when structural integration is a problem. (SD)

This report describes an attempt to apply a critical empirical test to some predictions from Ausubel's theory concerning the subsuming role of advance organizers. Alternative explanations are proposed and subsequent predictions tested. (BT)

Investigates whether an environmental program including an advance organizer component and a field experience results in an observable change in the environmental orientations of fifth- and sixth-grade students. Results show positive change. (HM)

Adjunct questions are test-like items interspersed at regular intervals, preceding or following prose passages, with the intention of increasing subsequent learning. In this state-of-the-art review, studies which include three major variables--age, ability, and question complexity level--are examined to determine whether a particular combination…

Five instructional techniques for increasing the meaningfulness of technical or scientific information are summarized: (1) organization of prose; (2) use of concrete analogy and advance organizers; (3) use of inserted questions in prose; (4) elaboration activities such as note taking; and (5) discovery learning. Research on each technique is…