In the 60s, an American psychologist, David Paul Ausubel, revisited the Kantian concept of prior knowledge but geared his efforts towards learning. His famous quote “If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly” (1968, p. vi) has made many teachers dig deeper into the “unknown.” Today, the notion is disputed, but we will come to that later. For now, we must understand what legacy Ausubel built and how it relates to prior knowledge.

As a follower of Piaget, Ausubel believed that knowledge needs to be constructed by the learner in mental schemata. Therefore, rote learning made no sense to him as it is not connected to anything that is meaningful to the learner. The learner, in Ausubel’s theory, observes intently and builds knowledge based on concepts of what they can already recognize in the context. Such concepts are organized in the learner’s mind in a hierarchy and may be retrieved once teachers can make good use of comparative and expository organizers.

 An example of the first is when EFL teachers ask students to categorize means of transportation. It is certain that all students will know something about how to go from one place to the next. Thus, it is only a question of retrieving this information and comparing what they already know with the new vocabulary to be learned. A different situation happens when the teacher is not sure students know anything about the topic. A case in point: have you ever tried to explain root beer to non-Americans? Oddly enough, you might try to expose them to soft drinks first to organize this new piece of knowledge into their schema.

Now we come to the part where knowledge might not always beget knowledge. And here we bring a seminal study performed by Bransford and Johnson in 1972. They were interested in knowing if prior knowledge needed activating before learning. To that end, they submitted participants to two conditions in their experiment. Some received a hint before reading the task, others did not. Guess who understood and performed better? The ones who were given the hint. Long story short, just having prior knowledge is not enough; it needs to be activated and used for learning to happen.

And now to some recent findings. Next time you think about your students’ prior knowledge, which is indeed important, consider these points: 1. Learners need to activate it; 2. It has to be relevant to the learning task; 3. It must agree with the new knowledge, to be what some people call “congruent,” Activation; Relevance; and Congruency—there goes an ARC to help your prior knowledge!