Advance organizer

A learning aid which structures a topic under study by providing a high-level overview to “organize and anchor” the subsequent material. See e.g. Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(5), 267–272.

Related:

• this provides evidence for (and an intervention which instantiates) Keeping the big picture in mind while reading helps one learn
• this is like the Pre-testing effect, but without testing.
• relates to a claim often seen in Constructivism papers (e.g. Schwartz, D. L., Lindgren, R., & Lewis, S. (2009). Constructivism in an age of non-constructivist assessments. In Constructivist instruction: Success or failure? (pp. 34–61). Routledge\/Taylor & Francis Group) that pre-instruction inquiry activities provide anchors which structure and reinforce later details