General principles of learning suggest that students learn better if a teacher:

General principles of learning are pedagogical maxims that prescribe the sequence in which a teacher presents material for effective learning — for example, known to unknown, concrete to abstract, empirical to rational, and general to specific (whole to part), where the concept is introduced in its overall form before its detailed intricacies are addressed.

A teacher who first introduces the concept overall and then moves on to its intricacies is following the general-to-specific (whole-to-part) maxim: presenting the whole picture first gives students a mental framework within which the finer details can be organised, so this ordering is preferred for effective learning.

• Introducing the concept in symbolic form before its physical form reverses the concrete-to-abstract maxim, which instead moves from a concept's physical/concrete form toward its symbolic/abstract form.

• Discussing what is unfamiliar to the student before what the student already knows reverses the known-to-unknown maxim, which instead moves from a student's existing knowledge toward new material.

• Discussing the concepts in terms of logic and reason before granting an opportunity to verify the ideas reverses the empirical-to-rational maxim, which instead moves from empirical observation/verification toward rational/logical reasoning.

So the option that presents the concept overall before its intricacies is the one consistent with accepted general principles of learning.