This 2-group quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore the following research questions: Do the fourth graders' post-intervention scores achieved in the unit of force and motion achievement test and attitude scale toward the unit depend on being in the groups that were taught the unit either with 'Online Advance Organizer Concept Teaching…

Teacher- and student-generated sketches can spawn meaningful note-taking and instructional processes for enhancing learning and knowledge retention.

Education should be made painless and the teaching must be made effective. Teaching is an activity, which is designed and performed for multiple objectives, in terms of changes in student behaviours. Models of teaching are just a blue print designed in advance for providing necessary structure and direction to the teacher for realizing the…

Six male Sprague-Dawley rats were used to examine the long-term retention of an olfactory discrimination learning set. Rats were trained on 30 odor-unique, 5-trial discrimination problems, transferred to an olfactory discrimination reversal task, and then given a 6-week break in training. The rats demonstrated use of a learning set by performing…

Summarizes a study designed to ascertain the effects of advance organizers on learning from text, with the position of both "part" and "whole" organizers as a manipulated variable. The effect of intelligence and its interaction with the treatment was also studied. Ten references are listed. (Author/FM)

Ausubel asserts that his work is impugned in various ways in Anderson, Spiro, and Anderson. This paper argues that a more careful reading of the original paper obviates most of Ausubel's concerns. (Author/GK)

Anderson, Spiro, and Anderson (EJ 189 658) assert that the author's assimilation theory of meaningful learning and retention is "hopelessly vague." Documented examination of these assertions indicates that they are unspecified, unsubstantiated, undocumented, and based on indisputable misrepresentation of published material and on logical…

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)

Two experiments examined the relative effects of concrete and abstract advance organizers on students' memory for subsequent prose. Results of the experiments are discussed in terms of the memorability, familiarity, and visualizability of concrete and abstract verbal materials. (JD)

Examines the effect that learners' prior knowledge has on long-term retention of information. Study (200 undergraduates) found no differences in long-term retention when prior knowledge was controlled, no interaction between prior knowledge and advance organizer strategies, no increased long-term retention with advance organizers, and no increased…

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)

Sophomore and junior high school auto mechanics students were given technical instruction plus advance organizers in the form of three unit booklets. In comparison with control groups, pre/posttest and retention test results show that advance organizers facilitate the learning and retention of new complex technical content. (SK)

This study demonstrated a reliable method of determining the attributes of prose materials on an imagery-concreteness scale, and evaluated the effects of an advance organizer and a learning passage on learning and retention when the attributes of these passages are defined on a concrete-imagery continuum. (Author/PN)

One hundred thirty-five studies of the facilitative effect of advance organizers on learning and retention were examined. Grade level, subject area studied, organizer presentation mode, and subject ability level were examined in relation to advance organizer effect. Advance organizers were shown to have a small facilitative effect. (Author/GDC)

In studies on the effect of advance objectives on readers' comprehension of prose, reliable differences were noted in the areas of the passages students focused upon depending on the presence of objectives and the level of learning they required. No differences were observed in reading comprehension. (JD)