The Role of Media and Advance Organizers in Learning for 5-Year-Old Children

Children are increasingly exposed to educational videos in their daily life. Video learning is popular for children to acquire information and knowledge. However, there is a lack of research to compare video and face-to-face learning directly. Moreover, the advance organizer is a kind of guiding material often used in teaching, but there are also few researches aimed at children. Whether an interaction between the learning media and the advance organizer is a good question to explore. The present study examines the effects of two types of learning media (video and face-to-face) and advance organizer on 5-year-old children’s learning of biological knowledge. Eighty 5-year-old children were taught biology knowledge in four experimental conditions: video learning with advance organizer, video learning without advance organizer, face-to-face learning with advance organizer, and face-to-face learning without advance organizer. The results indicated that only the learning media showed a significant main effect, while the advance organizer and the interaction between the two were not significant. We could infer that compared with watching videos, children learn biological knowledge better in face-to-face condition. The advance organizer in different learning media conditions does not have a significant impact on children’s learning. The research results are explained by children’s mental representations and other related theories, and some suggestions are put forward to improve children’s video learning.