Advanced organizers are teaching strategies, which can assist students to transfer or apply what they know to what they will be learning. Much of the research in this area can be credited to educational theorist David Ausubel. Ausubel's theory, called Subsumption Theory, is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material from the common verbal and textual presentation found in most school settings. Subsumption is a process of learning in which new material is related to material already learned. Ausebel contends that one of the major strategies to address this process is to use advance organizers.
"These organizers are introduced in advance of learning itself, and are also presented at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness; and since the substantive content of a given organizer or series of organizers is selected on the basis of its suitability for explaining, integrating, and interrelating the material they precede, this strategy simultaneously satisfies the substantive as well as the programming criteria for enhancing the organization strength of cognitive structure." (Ausubel, D. (1963). The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. New York: Grune & Stratton.).
Ausubel emphasizes that advance organizers are different from overviews
and summaries. Organizers act as a bridge between new learning material
and existing related ideas. With these strategies, students are allowed
to see a scaffold or outline of what they will be learning before the
formal instruction begins. They are provided clues and links to what has
been previously learned. These clues help students make connections with
that previously learned material.
These organizers
can be powerful tools when helping teachers plan. They help teachers to
clarify the larger ideas that their students will be exploring, identify
what they have already learned, and help them create links between the
two.
KWL Charts (Know, Want to learn, Learn)
