Students' prior knowledge about a topic impacts their understanding of text as they read¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on a source with no registered publication record (a web page, book or unpublished report). It is kept because 3 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Students with considerable prior knowledge can problem-solve more effectively, focus on what is important, and ask relevant questions, while those with inadequate prior knowledge struggle to distinguish relevant from irrelevant material. → Pilgrim 2016

Evidence¶

Pilgrim 2016¶

Pilgrim, J. M., & Pilgrim, J. (2016). The use of virtual reality tools in the reading-language arts classroom. Texas Journal of Literacy Education, 4(2). https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2374-7404

q2 · i? · theoretical · r2

The article asserts, citing prior literature (Richardson, Morgan, & Fleener; Sousa; Marzano), that "Evidence of the importance of prior knowledge in reading comprehension is well-documented." No new empirical data are reported; this is a synthesis statement.

"Students with considerable prior knowledge of a subject can use strategies to problem solve more effectively than those with little prior knowledge, can focus on what is important in a learning task, and can ask relevant questions about a topic."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Prior Knowledge — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Prior Knowledge Determines New Learning — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Relevancy of emphasized text directs attention and influences test performance — related
• Helping students make connections between prior knowledge and the texts they read is among the practices most consistently related to student growth — related
• Advance organizers aided learning in a 1980 meta-analysis, but activating prior topic knowledge did not improve primary pupils' text comprehension in one experiment — related
• Focusing students' attention on the meaning of a text before reading, such as introducing the topic and encouraging predictions, is among the practices most consistently related to student growth — related