Maintaining and Applying Knowledge

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For children to maintain their knowledge, practice is important. To generalize knowledge, application and practice in multiple settings are important. However, children who are vulnerable face many obstacles while trying to generalize knowledge. The first challenge is to actually learn information thoroughly (or to fluency). As previously explained, prerequisite knowledge is often completely or partially absent for many children who are vulnerable. Because of this, they may not have completely learned a skill and therefore cannot maintain their knowledge about it. In these cases, teachers have to reteach the basics before they expect children to generalize their knowledge to new tasks and settings.

For knowledge to be maintained over time it needs to be reviewed often. And for it to be applied in other settings, children need to be active learners in the application process. That is, children will need to engage in their own learning to apply their knowledge in school and home settings. For reasons that have been previously discussed (attention problems, memory problems), children who are vulnerable may have great difficulty applying their knowledge to new settings. Therefore, teachers need to provide support for children to be more active learners.