Integrating prior knowledge and multiple texts: expanding the Documents Model Framework

Students do not approach texts as blank slates. Rather, students’ potential learning from texts is dictated in substantial part by what they already know, or by the prior knowledge that they bring to texts. Yet, although prior knowledge has commonly been used as a control measure or has otherwise been associated with students’ text-based learning, how prior knowledge is reflected in students’ cognitive representations of multiple texts, and externalized through writing, has not yet been fully explored. This paper introduces a novel framework for conceptualizing how learners may cognitively represent their prior knowledge and information from multiple texts. This paper suggests that learners’ cognitive representations can be conceptualized along two dimensions—first, according to whether they separately represent texts or integrate or form intertextual connections. Second, according to whether they incorporate prior knowledge into texts’ content in an assimilative or elaborative fashion or use prior knowledge to question, resist, or recast information from texts, generating critiques. I find evidence for students forming cognitive representations falling along both of these dimensions or, incorporating prior knowledge in both an assimilative and critique-generating fashion. This suggests the need to examine how students integrate prior knowledge into their cognitive representations of multiple texts in future work.