Importance of prior knowledge (theoretical framework)

The common analogy for education often shows the student as an empty vessel with the teacher filling their minds with knowledge; however, no matter the student's age or experience, they will bring prior knowledge and experience to the learning process. What students bring to the table may be ideally suited for the course; it may be accurate but incomplete, factually correct but not relevant to the current topic, or inaccurate. Based on this list, it can be seen that a student's prior knowledge can either help or hinder the learning process. 

Regardless of a student's prior knowledge, it is vital that an instructor determine what that knowledge is. Armed with an understanding of a student's prior knowledge, a course or lesson can be tailored for maximum effectiveness. Accurate knowledge can be leveraged as a foundation, and inaccurate or inappropriate prior knowledge (misconceptions) can be targeted for correction.

 Different levels/kinds of knowledge

Accurate but insufficient: In this situation, students have some portion of the knowledge needed for their assigned task but not enough to support success. Since they recognize portions of the content, this can lead to overconfidence among the students (and instructor) about their ability to complete the assigned task. There are two main areas in which students' knowledge can be insufficient: Declarative knowledge (facts & definitions) and Procedural knowledge (how and/or when to do something, in other words, using information). 

Inappropriate: Knowledge in this area is based on factually correct information but incorrect when applied to the current situation. This can often occur when a term has a particular meaning in common usage or a specific field but has a different meaning in the new context. Another example results from using an analogy (or comparison) to explain something complex. Individuals can have difficulty separating from that description when that analogy no longer applies. 

This misapplication of knowledge can also negatively impact interactions with individuals from other cultural backgrounds. Our own cultural experiences and perspectives can often cause us to misinterpret the meaning or role of aspects of different cultures. This kind of inappropriate knowledge can impact both inside and outside the classroom. 

Inaccurate: Whereas the previous two categories included knowledge that was in at least some ways correct, this category contains just flat-out wrong knowledge. Sometimes, individuals hold an isolated fact that is wrong, and these can be relatively quickly addressed. 

A more challenging level of inaccurate knowledge involves misconceptions. This knowledge has become integrated into an individual's worldview and has likely been reinforced over the years based on repeated inaccurate observations. These are not corrected so easily. For example, a common misconception in biology is that the mass of a tree comes from the soil. Students have difficulty breaking this misconception and understanding that so much mass could come from CO2 in the air.

Gauging prior knowledge

Several potential strategies exist for gauging a student's prior knowledge, primarily based on some type of assessment quickly followed by the instructor evaluating the student's responses. 

1. Experience of others - A critical place to begin, especially for new instructors, is to ask colleagues about their experiences with student's prior knowledge. This can be regarding the course you are teaching, other classes at the same level, and prerequisite courses. Some of the following questions can be helpful in these regards: What do students struggle with? What is covered in the course? What are their learning objectives? How do students perform on "final" course assessments? What do students excel at? What do students never seem to get? Are there any misconceptions that they struggled with? 
2. Pre-assessment - Many disciplines publish concept inventories that may help target your pre-assessment in a course, and often, these are designed as multiple-choice question sets that could be used as the basis for a pre-test/quiz. An added benefit is that these concept inventories are often explicitly designed to ask about common trouble spots and misconceptions. One challenge is that they are usually created for a broader application than just a single course and would need to be appropriately focused for use as a pre-test for a course. If some particular skills or concepts are foundational to your course, then that may also form the basis for creating a pre-assessment. It is important to remember that these should be relatively short and low-stakes assignments.
3. Student Self-Assessment — It is also possible for students to assess their knowledge; however, this requires a degree of metacognitive ability that students may not possess at all levels. The self-assessment would be based on a list of concepts or skills that students would then rate their comfort/familiarity with. There are also models where students would complete a pre-test that includes a self-assessment component, such as answering a question and rating their confidence.
4. Student Brainstorming - In smaller classes or classes with small group sessions, open-ended questions can be used to determine the student's knowledge and experience with a topic. For example, "What comes to mind when you think of <blank>?" could be used to start a subject discussion. As with any group activity, the very well-prepared may "hide" the less well-prepared or quieter students, so it will be essential to design and guide the discussion carefully. Additionally, when any inaccuracies or misconceptions come up during the discussion, it will be necessary to address them immediately so they are not further reinforced.
5. Concept Maps - Similar to brainstorming, students can be asked a question or topic and asked to write down and connect all they know as part of a concept map. There are many ways to construct a concept map, so it will be essential to give students an idea of how to build the map and what aspects you wish to emphasize. If building connections is more important than coming up with the terms, it may be worth providing students with a list of concepts to use in their map. Once maps are built, they should be discussed with the students to identify gaps and misconceptions. These maps could also be revisited throughout the semester to show students their learning gains and provide a way to connect new knowledge to old ones.
6. Just keep an eye out - Depending on how the assignments in a course are structured, there are likely numerous opportunities to see how students are progressing. Looking for patterns of errors between students and on the part of a single student can illustrate misconceptions or incomplete understanding. This process can be more difficult in multi-section courses where more than one person is grading. Many large lectures have adopted class response systems (clickers) to gauge class-wise understanding in real-time. 

 Activation of prior knowledge

Extensive research has shown that connecting new knowledge to old leads to increased recall and retention of that information. Building these connections doesn't always happen spontaneously, and as instructors, we must help our students make the most of their knowledge and experiences. The lack of connection between topics is often most evident in the transfer between disciplines. For example, when students do not connect the physics and/or chemistry that they've already learned to understand in their biology courses, 

Methods to activate prior knowledge

Generation — Students are asked what they already know about the topic. This can be done by having students brainstorm together, build concept maps, or in numerous other ways. Having students repeat this activity at the end of the unit or course and compare it to the initial attempt can be a great way for them to visualize all that they have learned. 

Connect to other courses - For example, reading graphs is a skill that students learn in physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, math, statistics, and business (to name a few fields). Due to differences in contexts, goals, and terminology, students may be unable to connect the same processes across multiple fields. If you know that students must take Chemistry I before taking Biology I, you can specifically reference those connections. 

Connect within your course - As subject matter experts and the designers of the classes we teach; we often take for granted that the students will intuitively grasp those same connections we see. It can be as simple as saying, "Last time we talked about 'x'. Today, we are going to talk about 'y', which builds upon 'x' by …" Or, it can involve asking questions, such as "Where have we seen something similar?" or "How can we apply <blank> to today's topic?"

Analogies & Examples - Using examples that are relevant to your students' lives can increase motivation to learn and help students understand new concepts. Consider whether your examples are relevant to your students, and do not exclude or confuse them further. As a result, it may be most effective to ask students to generate examples of how a particular topic relates to their lives. Analogies can work similarly, but you must be sure they are accurate. 

Reasoning based on prior knowledge - Students use their knowledge of a situation or a topic to make predictions before beginning an activity. A common acronym for this activity is POE: Predict, Observe, Explain.

Insufficient Prior Knowledge

To know what insufficient knowledge looks like, you need to map out what sufficient knowledge looks like according to the learning objectives for your course. This will make this process overall more efficient. How can you "fix" this insufficient knowledge? The answer to that depends on how much a knowledge gap exists. 

Inappropriate Knowledge 

Some knowledge is not universal among fields, and it is important to point this out to students. A typical example illustrates how writing styles and rules differ between fields. Whereas quotes may be expected in an English or history paper, they are generally not appropriate for a paper in a science course. It can be helpful to provide heuristics to aid students in identifying when or when not to apply their outside knowledge. This is especially true in areas where students frequently misapply their knowledge.

While analogies can be very useful in helping students understand complex concepts, they can often break down under certain conditions/circumstances and lead to inappropriate applications. As a result, when using analogies, point out that they are usually oversimplifications and indicate under what conditions they might no longer be applicable. 

Inaccurate Knowledge 

Simply telling a student their answer is incorrect often does not resolve the underlying misconception. One way to address this is to have students make a prediction and test it. If their prediction is inaccurate, that could/should spur them to seek out information explaining what happened. If experiments or computer models are not available or applicable, it is possible to have them justify their reasoning. This can help identify contradictions; however, there is extensive inaccurate information available on the internet, which may complicate this process. This approach may also not strongly affect beliefs that are firmly held. 

It is important to remember that in order to overcome these misconceptions, students must be given repeated opportunities to use accurate knowledge. They must also be given time to thoroughly consider a topic and reason out the correct answers. Misconceptions often persist because they are easier and faster for students to understand than the correct answers. 

Citation:

Ambrose, Susan A., et al. How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.