A Network Model of Knowledge Acquisition

Starting from the idea that organization of knowledge in an individual’s mind can be considered a network, we use recent results from network science to speculate on how information can be organized in the brain. A hierarchy of three increasingly sophisticated network systems -a random network, a small world network and a scale free network can be used to model the increasing sophistication of knowledge networks as they evolve during learning. These ideas are useful to teachers seeking to help their students organize their new knowledge.