He significant learning Is opposed to traditional learning and refers to a learning method where the new knowledge to be acquired is related to previous knowledge (Ausubel, 2000).
L Trainees actively integrate new information into older information (Novak, 2002). The concept of mapping has been a useful technique for this; Allows learners to connect their existing knowledge with the subjects they are learning.
David Ausubel was an American cognitive psychologist who focused on the learning of college students. Ausubel was especially interested in what the student already knows, since according to him was the main determinant of what he would learn later.
The cognitive psychologist saw learning as an active process and did not believe that it was simply a passive response to the environment around us.
Students and learners actively seek to make sense of their surroundings by integrating new knowledge with those who have already learned.
The key concept of Ausubel's theory
The key concept of the terabyte of Ausubel learning is the cognitive structure. I saw the cognitive structure as the sum of all the knowledge we have acquired, as well as the relationships between the facts, concepts and principles that make up this knowledge.
For Ausubel, learning consists in bringing something new to our cognitive structure and linking it to existing knowledge located in this structure. In this way, we form the meaning, which is the center of the work of this psychologist.
In the preface to his book Educational psychology: a cognitive point of view , Ausubel writes:
"The most important factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Find out what it is that you already know and teach it accordingly"(Ausubel, 1968, p. Vi)
This led Ausubel to develop an interesting theory about meaningful learning and advance organizers.
The theory about learning
Ausubel believed that the learning of new knowledge is formed on what we already know. The construction of knowledge begins with our observation and recognition of events and objects through concepts that we already have. We learn by building a network of concepts and adding others to it.
Concept maps, developed by Ausubel and Novac, are teaching resources that use this aspect of theory to enable instruction to learners. It is a way of representing the relationships between ideas, images or words.
Ausubel also emphasizes the importance of learning by reception rather than discovery learning, and the importance of meaningful learning rather than mechanical learning.
Ausubel does not see learning by discovery as advantageous. For him, all kinds of learning occur in the same way being compared and contrasted with the previous knowledge that exist in the cognitive structure of the person.
If a person has relevant content in their existing cognitive structure with which new materials can be related, then learning can be meaningful. If new materials can not be related to any previous knowledge, learning can only occur mechanically.
Ausubel sees several limitations in learning by discovery and sees no advantage in it. This type of learning will surely take longer than learning by reception because the learner has to find out what he has to learn and then he has to begin to carry out the process of bringing the new information and relating it with the information existing in the cognitive structure To form meaning.
Another limitation of discovery learning is that the student can discover information that is not correct and learn wrong content.
Ausubel stated that his theory applies only to reception learning in academic settings. However, he did not say anything about learning by discovery did not work, but was not as effective as learning by reception.
Meaningful learning
Ausubel's theory focuses on meaningful learning. According to their theory, to learn meaningfully, individuals must relate new knowledge to relevant concepts they already know. New knowledge must interact with the knowledge structure of the learner.
Meaningful learning can be contrasted with mechanical learning. The latter may also incorporate new information into the existing knowledge structure without interaction.
Mechanical memory is used to remember sequences of objects, such as phone numbers. However, they are of no use to the person who memorizes them when it comes to understanding the relationships between objects, since concepts that are learned through mechanical memory can not be related to previous knowledge.
In essence, there is nothing in the existing cognitive structure of the person with which they can relate the new information to form meaning. In this way, it can only be learned mechanically.
Meaningful learning adheres to prior knowledge and becomes the basis for learning additional information. Mechanical learning does not stick because it does not have these meaningful connections. That's why it fades from memory pretty quickly.
Since meaningful learning involves a recognition of the links between concepts, it has the privilege of being transferred to long-term memory. The most crucial element in Ausubel's meaningful learning is how new information is integrated into the knowledge structure.
As a result, Ausubel believed that knowledge is organized in a hierarchical way: the new information is meaningful so that it can be related to what we already know.
The Advance Organizers
Ausubel advocates the use of advance organizers as a mechanism to help link the new learning material with related ideas that already exist.
Advanced or advanced organizers consist of brief introductions to a topic, providing a structure to the student so that the student relates the new information that is presented with his previous knowledge.
Advanced organizers have a very high level of abstraction and constitute the principle of a deductive exposition; Are the beginning of an exhibition that goes from the most general to the most particular. These tools have the following essential characteristics:
- Advance organizers are typically a small set of verbal or visual information.
- They are introduced to the learner before beginning to learn a set of knowledge.
- They are of a high level of abstraction, in the sense that they do not contain new information to learn.
- Its purpose is to provide the student with means to generate logical relationships with the new material.
- They influence the student's coding process.
The theory of Ausubel's advance organizers states that there are two categories: comparative and expository.
Comparative Organizers
This type of organizers activates existing schemes and is used as a reminder to bring to work memory what you may not consciously consider relevant. A comparison organizer is used both to integrate information and to discriminate it.
"Comparative organizers integrate new ideas with basically similar concepts in cognitive structure, and also increase the discrimination between new and existing ideas, which are essentially different but easily confused"(Ausubel, 1968)
Exhibition Organizers
Exhibition organizers are often used when new learning material is unfamiliar to the learner.
They usually relate what the learner already knows with new and unfamiliar material, to make this little known material more plausible for the person.
Examples of practical applications in educational contexts
It has been found that, in educational contexts, the best way to present the advance organizers is in written and concrete form, contrary to Ausubel's suggestion that advance organizers should be abstract in nature.
In addition, several guidelines have been suggested regarding the use of the organizers:
- Advance organizers should be used only when subjects are not able to make appropriate connections by their own means.
- They should be used explicitly.
- Organizers should provide students with adequate time to study materials.
- It is advisable for students to be tested to see what they remember after a short period of time.
Hung and Chao (2007) summarize three principles concerning the design that Ausubel proposed for the construction of advance organizers.
First, the person designing them must determine the content of the lead organizer based on the principle of assimilation.
Second, the designer has to consider the appropriateness of the content taking into account the characteristics of the learner or student.
Third, and finally, the designer must choose between the organizers of expository and comparative advancement.
Due to the limited scope of Ausubel's theory of assimilation, its applications are also limited, especially to contexts in which the educational objective is to provide new information in writing.
But what is the theory of assimilation? Unlike many other educational theories, Ausubel's theory of assimilation was developed exclusively for educational designs. Develop a way to create teaching materials to help students organize content to make them meaningful and learn better.
The four principles of the theory of assimilation:
- The more general concepts should be presented first to the students and then the analysis should be made.
- Teaching materials should include both new and previously acquired information. Comparisons between new and old concepts are crucial for learning.
- Existing cognitive structures should not be developed, but simply reorganized into the student's memory.
- The task of the instructor is to fill the gap between what the student already knows and what to learn.
State of the learning theory of Ausubel
Ausubel published his most important book on learning theory, P Educational psychology: a cognitive point of view , In 1968, with a second edition in 1978.
He was one of the earliest cognitive theorists during a time when behaviorism was the dominant theory that most influenced education.
Due to a wide variety of reasons, Ausubel never received the recognition it deserved.
Many of his ideas found their place in the flow of educational psychology , But Ausubel was not granted the credit that was due. For example, it was Ausubel who created the advance organizers that are common in today's textbooks.
He also emphasized, for the first time, that it was convenient to begin with a general idea of the subject to be learned or studied or with a fundamental structure of the subject and, later, to learn the details.
This approach is practiced in many contexts today, but at the time, it contrasted strongly with behavioral theories, which emphasized the importance of starting small pieces of content and building on them.
Ausubel emphasized that what most influenced learning was what the student already knows, that is, the content of his cognitive structure. At present, most educational styles attempt to combine instruction with the prior knowledge of the student to learn meaningfully, just what Ausubel claimed.
Although Ausubel's name is not widely recognized in the world of education, his ideas have a growing impact. It helped psychology to break with the rigid educational approaches that derived from behavioral theories.
It was also an impulse to start thinking about what was going on inside the students' brains when teachers taught them.
Ausubel was one of the first theorists to see learning as an active process, not a passive experience. He wanted the education professionals to make the students commit to their own learning and to help them relate the new content to what they already know to make sense of their new knowledge.