Advance Organizers as Aids for Reading: Nature of the Learner and the Learning.
Research on advance organizers has yielded mixed conclusions about their instructional value. Most published studies of advance organizers have used college adults as subjects, but less able students may be the ones who can gain the most from such devices. This investigation examined advance organizer effectiveness for disadvantaged seventh-grade students. It assessed the influence of the organizer under two testing formats: recall and recognition. The advance organizer improved retention of a social studies passage by 22% over what occurred when a general interest introduction of similar length preceded the passage. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the advance organizer was clear regardless of testing conditions.