Schema Theory

Schema theory holds that human memory and comprehension are organized around schemas, mental structures that represent categories of objects, events or situations and that guide how new information is interpreted, stored and recalled. The concept traces to psychologist Frederic Bartlett's 1932 book Remembering, which showed that people reconstruct, rather than simply retrieve, memories by fitting them into existing structures shaped by prior experience and culture. In education, schema theory became especially influential in reading research from the 1970s onward, where researchers such as Richard C. Anderson argued that a reader's comprehension of a text depends heavily on the background schemas they already possess, so that building or activating relevant prior knowledge before instruction improves understanding of new material.