National Autonomous University of Honduras

Faculty of Humanities and Art

School of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Foreign Languages Career

Psychopedagogy
Msc. Rosa Oneyda Palacios Gmez
Group 16
Members

Bessy Mendoza
Any Herrera
Indira Torres

David Ausubel
Meaningful Learning Theory

Biography

Born: October 25, 1918

Died: July 9, 2008
Grew up in Brooklyn, New York
He graduated from medical school at
Middlesex University.
Later he earned a Ph.D in Developmental
Psychology at Columbia University.
He was influenced by the work ofPiaget.

In 1973, Ausubel retired from academic

life and devoted himself to his psychiatric
practice.

In 1976, he received the Thorndike

Award from the American Psychological
Association for "Distinguished
Psychological Contributions to Education".

Meaningful Learning Theory

Concerned with how

students learn large
amounts of meaningful
material from
verbal/textual
presentations in a
learning activities.
Meaningful learning
results when new
information is acquired by
linking the new
information in the
learners own cognitive
structure

Learning is based on the

representational,
superordinate 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 nonverbatim basis (previous
knowledge)

The processes of meaningful

learning:

Ausubel proposed four processes by

which meaningful learning occur:
Derivative Subsumption
Correlative Subsumption
Superordinate Learning
Combinatorial Learning

Meaningful Learning Theory

Derivative Subsumption

Describes the
situation in which
the new information
pupils learn is an
instance or example
of a concept that
pupils have already
learned.

Correlative Subsumption

More valuable
learning than that
of derivative
subsumption,
since it enriches
the higher-level
concept.

Meaningful Learning Theory

Superordinate Learning

In this case, you

already knew a lot
of examples of the
concept, but you
did not know the
concept until it
was taught to
pupils

Combinatorial Learning

It describes a process
by which the new
idea is derived from
another idea that is
comes from his
previous knowledge
(in a different, but
related, branch)
Students could think
of this as learning by
analogy

Principles of Ausubels
Meaningful Reception
Learning Theory
Within a classroom setting include:
The most general ideas of a subject
should be presented first and then
progressively differentiated in terms of
detail and specificity.
Instructional materials should attempt to
integrate new material with previously
presented information through
comparisons and cross-referencing of
new and old
ideas.

Principles of Ausubels
Meaningful Reception
Learning
Theory
Instructors should
incorporate advance

organizers when teaching a new concept.

Instructors should use a number of examples
and focus on both similarities and differences.
Classroom application of Ausubel's theory
should discourage rote learning of materials
that can be learned more meaningfully.
The most important single factor influencing
learning is what the learner already knows.

Summary

For Ausubel, meaningful learning is a

process that related new information
relevant to the concepts contained in a
persons cognitive structure.
In order to be meaningful to students
learning, then learning should be linked and
relevant to students cognitive structures.
Relevance to students cognitive structures
can happen when we pay attention to early
knowledge of the concepts that preceded
the concept to be learned.

Summary

It is important for students to construct

knowledge through learning.
The essential theory of meaningful learning
is a teaching which Ausubel enables
students can associate the beginning of
knowledge with new knowledge that will
learn and how teachers can facilitate
learning by preparing the facility as a
presentation of the subject matter which
allows students to build knowledge in
discovery learning activities.