In education, schema refers to a mental structure that helps us understand how things work and how we organize knowledge. As we take in new information, we connect it to other things we know, believe, or have experienced, and those connections form a sort of structure in the brain. Schemas are categories of information stored in long-term memory, and they contain groups of linked memories, concepts, or words.
In education, schema theory can help us understand the differences between novices and experts and our approach to classroom teaching, curriculum planning, and resource design. By encouraging students to think about concepts in relation to one another, as opposed to individually, we can help them build schemas. Well-developed schemas facilitate not only the retrieval of already learned facts but also help when learning related information and free up brain power that can be used for other tasks.
To help students build schema, we can start with individual concepts, which are the building blocks of schema. Examples of concepts include story patterns, character, fraction, whole number, living things, organelle, leadership, and sovereignty. We can also use advance organizers, which are activities done prior to introducing new material that help students organize and perhaps prepare to re-organize their thinking.
In summary, schema in education refers to a mental structure that helps us understand how things work and how we organize knowledge. By encouraging students to think about concepts in relation to one another, we can help them build schemas, which facilitate the retrieval of already learned facts, help when learning related information, and free up brain power that can be used for other tasks.
