How Students Organize Knowledge Influences How They Learn and Apply What They Know
Consider two students who are asked to identify when the British defeated the Spanish Armada. The first student tells us that the date is 1588, and the second says that he cannot remember the precise date but thinks it must be around 1590. Given that 1588 is the correct answer, the first student appears to have more accurate knowledge.
However, when asked how they arrived at their answers, the first student says that she memorized the date. In contrast, the second student says he knew that the British colonized Virginia just after 1600 and inferred that the British would not organize colonization until navigation was considered safe. Figuring that it would take around 10 years for navigation to be organized, he arrived at the answer of 1590.
These responses reveal very different ways of organizing knowledge, which has implications for future learning.
Novices’ vs. experts’ knowledge organization
Experts and novices in a field organize knowledge in different ways. One of the ways these knowledge organizations differ is in the number or density of connections among the concepts, facts, and skills they know. The images below show different examples of how these organizational structures can differ. Pieces of knowledge are represented by nodes (circles), and relationships between them are represented by links (lines).
Although students may not always possess highly connected knowledge organizations, they can develop more sophisticated knowledge organizations over time. You can help your students by providing structures that help them develop more connections among pieces of knowledge.
Strategies for organizing information
The following strategies offer some ways for you to assess your own knowledge organizations and help students develop more connected and meaningful ways of organizing their knowledge.
- Create a concept map to analyze your/your students’ knowledge organization
- Use a sorting task to expose students’ knowledge organizations (e.g., surface vs. deep connections)
- Explicitly share the organizational structure of the course, each lesson/lab, discussion, etc.
- Encourage students to work with multiple organizing structures (e.g., classify plants first based on their evolutionary histories and then based on native habitat)
Reflection Activity
Reflect on how knowledge is organized in your discipline by working through the following questions:
- Identify a core concept in your field: What is a fundamental idea or principle that underlies much of the knowledge in your discipline?
- How is this concept typically connected to other ideas, facts, or concepts in your field? Consider the number or density of connections. Are there many related concepts, or is it often understood in isolation?
- Describe how an expert in your field would organize and relate this concept to other knowledge. How would their organization differ from a novice’s understanding?
- Think of a common misunderstanding or gap in how students or novices might organize knowledge around this concept. How might this disconnection impede deeper understanding?
- What strategies could you use to help students build more meaningful and connected knowledge organizations?
Spatial diffusion refers to the way ideas, goods, and people move across space and the factors influencing this movement (Rubenstein, 2019).
Spatial diffusion is connected to various related concepts such as globalization, migration patterns, urbanization, transportation networks, and cultural exchange. An expert geographer would understand spatial diffusion as part of a complex system that includes physical geography (e.g., natural barriers like mountains), human geography (e.g., political boundaries), and economic geography (e.g., trade routes and market access). They would connect it to historical events like colonization, technological advances like air travel, and social dynamics like the spread of ideologies or diseases.
Students might view spatial diffusion as a simple, linear process, assuming ideas or people spread uniformly without recognizing the influence of geography, political power, or cultural resistance. This misconception might cause them to overlook how uneven diffusion creates inequalities or shapes regional development differently.
To help students, you could use a concept map showing how spatial diffusion intersects with political, economic, and cultural factors. Students could complete a sorting task where they categorize different types of diffusion (e.g., contagious, hierarchical, relocation) and identify real-world examples. Or you could present case studies (like the spread of the internet or the diffusion of global fashion trends) and ask students to analyze how various factors influenced the patterns in different regions.
References
Rubenstein, J. M. (2019). The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography (13th ed.). Pearson.