RESOURCES
PODCASTS & VIDEOS
The 57 Most Important Words in Education Reform
Rick Hess (2014)
Robert Pondiscio explains the role knowledge plays in reading.
The Baseball Study by Recht & Leslie
Student Achievement Partners (2015)
Explains how background knowledge affects reading comprehension.
Why Prior Knowledge Wins the Game
Edutopia (2023)
Although schools have long prioritized discrete skills in reading instruction, education writer Natalie Wexler says building rich background knowledge could lead to more successful readers.
How Learning Happens: Principles Every Teacher Should Know with Carl Hendrick
Melissa & Lori Love Literacy Episode 242 (2026)
Carl Hendrick discusses principles of learning and the role knowledge plays in learning.
ARTICLES
It's time to start talking about elementary history Instruction. The History Matters Campaign demonstrates how historical content knowledge is uniquely positioned to support literacy.
Why Schools Aren't Equipping Students for Citizenship – Natalie Wexler, Minding the Gap (February 18,2026) A new book lays bare a pervasive lack of historical knowledge--and a new curriculum tool suggests a path forward.
Without an understanding of human cognitive architecture, instruction is blind. – Dr Vicki Likourezos, The Education Hub (March 3, 2021) Cognitive load theory helps us to understand how people generally learn and store new information, and the types of instructional practices that best support learning. It draws on the characteristics of working memory and long-term memory and the relationship between them to explain how people learn. Cognitive load theory emerged in the late 1980s from the work of John Sweller and his colleagues. The theory is based on our knowledge of the structure and processes of the human mind, known as human cognitive architecture. Human cognitive architecture helps us understand how we learn, think, and solve problems. It is considered to be a natural information processing system that generates various procedures designed to reduce cognitive load and facilitate the acquisition of biologically secondary knowledge held in long-term memory.
