{"id":2099,"date":"2020-11-17T02:54:56","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T02:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/course.oeru.org\/nzext101\/?page_id=2099"},"modified":"2020-11-17T02:54:56","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T02:54:56","slug":"prior-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/course.oeru.org\/nzext101\/learning-pathways\/teacher-for-learning\/prior-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Prior knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Lost<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
\u201c\n<\/td>\n Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of the learners.\n<\/td>\n \u201d\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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\u2014John Holt<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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Prior Knowledge<\/h2>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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\"Prior<\/a><\/div>\n

\nWe know, without a doubt, that the single most important attribute that our students bring to class is their prior learning and experience. This knowledge is a special kind of ‘luggage’ that can either contain essential building blocks to advance toward mastery or be a heavy weight that slows down and impedes learning.
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Prior knowledge can help or hinder learning<\/span><\/h4>\n

Help<\/b>: Using students\u2019 own experiences to generate examples helps learners to make connections and increase both retention and overall knowledge acquisition. Examples include scaffolding learning from earlier classes and experiences.\n<\/p>\n

Hinder<\/b>: Insufficient, inaccurate, or incorrect information can slow or halt learning. For example, you may have heard of the famous physics education study where scientific misconceptions persist even in Harvard graduates<\/a> about why we have seasons, or whether a feather dropped from a specific height would fall slower than an anvil that is dropped from the same height.\n<\/p>\n

Even after having learned and been tested, students persist on reverting back to ‘intuitive’ stances about scientific misconceptions, which ultimately can hinder any potential learning that would need to scaffold onto these basic primary school principles and concepts.
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Strategies to determine and acknowledge students\u2019 prior knowledge<\/span><\/h4>\n

We can identify some common misconceptions in our own discipline(s) by considering our students’ prior learning, and by connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge.\n<\/p>\n