Ausubel believed that learning is based upon the kinds of superordinate, representational, and combinatorial processes that occur

during the reception of information. A primary process in learning is to start with a "Big Picture" of the upcoming content, and link
new ideas, concepts, vocabulary, to existing mental maps of the content area.

According to Ausubel, it is important for teachers to:

o provide a preview of information to be learned by providing a brief introduction about the way that information that is going
to be presented;

o link old information to something new being taught, which helps students to recognize that the topic they are beginning to
learn is not totally new, but can be related to a previously learned concept or process.

According to Joyce et al. (2000), the advance organizer model has three phases of activity:

Phase I (includes presentation of the advance organizer)

o Clarify the aims of the lesson

o Present the advance organizer

o Prompt for awareness of relevant knowledge

Phase II (includes making links to/from the organizer)

o Present the learning task or learning material

o Make the organization and logical order of the learning material explicit

Phase III (strengthening of the cognitive organization)

o Integrative reconciliation and active reception learning (e.g. the teacher can ask learners to make summaries, to point our
differences, to relate new examples with the organizer).

o Elicit a critical approach to the subject matter (have students think about contradictions or implicit inferences in the
learning material or previous knowledge)

Advance organizers provide the necessary scaffolding for students to either learn new and unfamiliar material or to integrate new
ideas into relatively familiar ideas.

The following strategies can be used to implement Advance Organizers:

o review basic concepts prior to studying a new concept;

o have students identify the characteristics of a known phenomenon and then relate them to the new concept;

o give a scenario and ask students to infer rules based upon their current knowledge;

o use charts, diagrams, oral presentations, or concept maps;

o ask students to compare and contrast the new content based on what they already know; and

o identify a problem and ask for a reason why it may occur (before teaching the reason).