Question

What is the role of previous experience in constructing New knowledge

Answer 1

The instructor’s work of facilitating students’ learning never ends. In order to facilitate learning, one of the fundamental principles instructors employ is understanding students’ prior knowledge. It is well known that students build on what they already know and have come to understand through formal and informal experiences. People develop attitudes and beliefs as they progress through life. For the instructor, it is important to assess such prior knowledge or attitudes and beliefs very early in the semester since the knowledge students possess may either promote or hinder their learning.  It is also important to assess prior knowledge and skills early since such information could be used to help foster student engagement and critical thinking in the course. 

Through assessments, the instructor will come to know the extent to which students’ prior knowledge is accurate or inaccurate. In the instances when  prior knowledge is inaccurate, instructors will need to spend some time helping students to come to terms with their misconceptions before they can go on to help the students build new knowledge.  Again, the ease or difficulty of such a task will lie in students’ making a conscious or unconscious decision to hold on to such misconceptions. In such a case, the inadequate and inaccurate prior knowledge will tend to hinder learning.  Therefore, as indicated earlier on, the instructor will benefit from spending some time to determine the extent and nature of students’ prior knowledge and skills.