David Ausubel

1
David Ausubel
David Ausabel is a cognitive psychologist who
studied learning theory. Ausabel is credited
with the learning theory of advanced organizers.
This theory is easily applicable to second
language acquisition, but transcends a singular
application, to application across educational
domains. Advance Organizer entails the use of
introductory materials with a high level of
generality that introduce new material and
facilitate learning by providing an "anchoring
idea" to which the new idea can be attached .
Ausabel, along instructional scientists Robert
Gagné, Leslie Briggs, David Merrill, Albert
Bandura, Benjamin Bloom, Walter Dick, and others
developed the systems approach which utilizes
research on the conditions of learning required
for people to achieve clearly defined
performance outcomes. The model is based upon and
has grown out of a thorough understanding of
learning theory and research. Ausabel believes
that meaningful learning is crucial for classroom
instruction. Meaningful learning, according to
Ausabel, entails new knowledge that relates to
what one already knows and that can easily
retained and applied.
2
David Ausubel
Cognitive theorists believe that it is essential
to relate new knowledge to existing information
learned. Teachers can facilitate learning by
organizing information presented so that new
concepts are easily relatable to concepts already
learned. Examples of devices that may be used
include pictures, titles of stories, reviews of
previously learned concepts, short video
segments, a paradigm, a grammar rule, etc.
(direct quote from David Ausubel's Cognitive
Learning Theory).
Ausabel broke down the process of learning to
three steps what will the person learn, what
the person wants to learn, and what did the
person learn? Ausabel, along with McLaughlin
and Ellis, contend that mental structure or
organization of knowledge highly influences
learning. These theorists grounded their research
on the work of Jean Piaget. Piaget believed that
people actively "organize experience" (online
quote from Omaggio, p. 55). New information must
be integrated into the mental structure to be
learned. Human learning entails strategies for
thinking, understanding, remembering and
producing language. Language proficiency depends
on understanding, integrating, organizing ,practic
ing, and automizing subskills needed to
communicate. Restructuring (reorganizing
existing mental structure to accommodate new
knowledge) and automatization (the routine
performance of a skill or subskill without
thinking about it) are central to developing
language proficiency (pp. 54-59).
http//www.coe.ufl.edu
3
David Ausubel
Subsumption Theory (D. Ausubel) Ausubel's
theory is concerned with how individuals learn
large amounts of meaningful material from
verbal/textual presentations in a school setting
(in contrast to theories developed in the
context of laboratory experiments). According to
Ausubel, learning is based upon the kinds of
superordinate, representational, and
combinatorial processes that occur during the
reception of information. A primary process in
learning is subsumption in which new material is
related to relevant ideas in the existing
cognitive structure on a substantive,
non-verbatim basis. Cognitive structures
represent the residue of all learning
experiences forgetting occurs because certain
details get integrated and lose their individual
identity. A major instructional mechanism
proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance
organizers "These organizers are introduced in
advance of learning itself, and are also
presented at a higher level of abstraction,
generality, and inclusiveness and since the
substantive content of a given organizer or
series of organizers is selected on the basis of
its suitability for explaining , integrating, and
interrelating the material they precede, this
strategy simultaneously satisfies the
substantive as well as the programming criteria
for enhancing the organization strength of
cognitive structure." (1963 , p. 81).
4
David Ausubel
Ausubel emphasizes that advance organizers are
different from overviews and summaries which
simply emphasize key ideas and are presented at
the same level of abstraction and generality as
the rest of the material. Organizers act as a
subsuming bridge between new learning material
and existing related ideas. Ausubel's theory
has commonalities with Gestalt theories and those
that involve schema (e.g., Bartlett) as a
central principle. There are also similarities
with Bruner's "spiral learning model , although
Ausubel emphasizes that subsumption involves
reorganization of existing cognitive structures
not the development of new structures as
constructivist theories suggest Ausubel was
apparently influenced by the work of Piaget on
cognitive development.
Principles 1. The most general ideas of a
subject should be presented first and then
progressively differentiated in terms of
detail and specificity. 2. Instructional
materials should attempt to integrate new
material with previously presented
information through comparisons and
cross-referencing of new and old ideas.
http//tip.psychology.org
5
David Ausubel
6
David Ausubel
Books 1.The Psychology of Meaningful
Verbal Learning. Orlando, FL Grune Stratton,
1963 (Italian edition, 1966.)2.
Readings in the Psychology of Cognition.
(Co-editor with R. C. Anderson.) New York Holt,
Rinehart Winston, 1965.3.
Educational Psychology A Cognitive View. New
York Holt, Rinehart Winston, 1968. (German
edition, 1974.) (2nd edition, 1978.)
(Spanish edition, 1977.) (2nd German edition,
1980.) (Italian edition, 1978.) (Portuguese
edition, 1980.) (Romanian edition, 1981.)
(2nd Spanish edition, 1982).4. School Learning
An Introduction to Educational Psychology. (With
Floyd C. Robinson. New York Holt,
Rinehart WInston, 1969. (British edition,
1971.) (Japanese edition, with A. Yoshida, 1984.)
(Australian edition, 1972.)
(Romanian edition, 1973.)5. Psychology in
Teacher Preparation. (With John Herbert.)
Toronto The Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, 1969.
Refrences http//www.coe.ufl.edu http//tip.psych
ology.org