AUSUBEL’S MEANINGFUL

VERBAL LEARNING /

SUBSUMPTION THEORY

Introduction

Many educational psychology theories often criticize the expository or presentational manner of teaching. They say that teachers assume such a major role in learning as providers of information, while students remain passive receivers of information.

Introduction

David Ausubel, instead of criticizing this manner of teaching, proposed ways of improving it. He suggested the use of advance organizers. His ideas are contained in his theory of Meaningful Verbal Learning.

Ausubel’s Subsumption Theory

Four Process for Meaningful Learning

Meaningful Reception of Information

Advance Organizers

Learner’s Cognitive Structure

Correlative Subsumption

Use of Advance Graphic Organizer

ExpositoryDerivative

Subsumption

Narrative

SubsumptionGraphic

OrganizersCombinatorial

Learning

Super ordinate Learning

Skimming

Activity:

The figure above is an advance organizer.

Study it. Read the words found in each box.

Examine how the lines connect the boxes.

Describe the advance organizer, specifically on how the words are related to each other.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory

1. The most important factor influencing learning is the quantity, clarity and organization of the learner’s present knowledge. This present knowledge consists of facts, concepts, propositions, theories and raw perceptual data that learner has available to him/her at any point in time this comprises his/her cognitive structure.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory2. Meaningful learning takes place when an idea

to be learned is related in some sensible way to ideas that the learner already possesses .

Ausubel believed that before new material can be presented effectively, the student’s cognitive structure should be strengthened.

When this is done, acquisition and retention of new information is facilitated.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory

The way to strengthen the student’s cognitive structure is by using advance organizers that allow students to already have a bird’s eye view or to see the “big picture” of the topic to be learned even before going to the details.

Ausubel believed that before new material can be presented effectively, the student’s cognitive structure should be strengthened.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory

Ausubel’s belief of the use of advance organizers is anchored on the principle of subsumption. He thought that the primary way of learning was subsumption: a process by which new material is related to relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure. Likewise, Asusubel pointed out, that what is learned is based on what is already known.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory

This signifies that one’s own prior knowledge and biases limit and affect what is learned. Also, retention of new knowledge is greater because it is based on prior concrete concepts.

Meaningful learning can take place through four process:

Derivative Subsumption

Examine this example: Now let’s say you see a new kind of bird

that has really big body and long strong legs. It doesn’t fly but it can run fast. In order to accommodate this new information, you have to change or expand your concept of bird to include the possibility of being and having long legs. You now include your concept of an Ostrich to your previous concept of what bird is.

Derivative Subsumption

You have learned about this new kind of bird through the process of correlative subsumption. In a sense, you might say this is more “valuable” learning than that of derivative subsumption, since is enriches the higher-level concept.

Super ordinate Learning

Imagine that a child was well acquainted with banana, mango, dalandan, guava etc., but the child did not know, until she was taught, that these ware all examples of fruits. In this case, the child already knew a lot of examples of the concept, did not know the concept itself until it was taught to her. This is super ordinate learning.

Combinatorial learning

This is when newly acquired knowledge combines with prior knowledge to enrich the understanding of both concepts. The first three learning process all included new information that relates to hierarchy at a level that is either below or above previously acquired knowledge.

Combinatorial learning

Combinatorial learning is different; it describes a process by which the new idea is derived from another idea that is neither higher or lower in the hierarchy, but at the same level ( in a different, but related, “branch”).

It is a lot like as learning by analogy. For example, to teach someone about how plants “breathe” you might relate it to previously acquired knowledge of human respiratory where man inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide.

Advance Organizers

The advance organizer is a major instructional tool proposed by ausubel. The advance organizer, gives you two benefits: (1.) You will find it easier to connect new information with what you already know about the topic. (2.) you can readily see how the concepts in a certain topic are related to each other.

Advance Organizers

As you go about learning about the topic and go through the four learning process, the advance organizer helps you link the new learning to your existing scheme. As such, advance organizers facilitate learning by helping you organize and strengthen your cognitive structure.

Advance Organizers

Ausubel stressed that advance organizers are not the same with overviews and summaries which simply emphasize key ideas 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.

Types of advance organizers

Expository – describes the new content.

Narrative – presents the new information in form of a story to students.

Skimming – is done by looking over the new material to gain a basic overview.

Graphic organizer – visual to set up or outline the new information. This may include pictographs, descriptive patterns, concept patterns, concept maps.

Application of principles

1. The most general ideas of the subject should be presented first and then progressively differentiated in terms of detail and specificity. He called this progressive differentiation. According to Ausubel, the purpose of progressive differentiation is to increase the stability and clarity of anchoring ideas.

Application of principles

The basic idea here is that, if you’re teaching three related topics A, B and C, rather than teaching all topic A, then B, etc., you would take a spiral approach. That is, in your first pass through the material, you would teach the “big” ideas (i.e., those highest in the hierarchy ) in all three topics, then on successive passes you would begin to elaborate the details.

Application of principles

2. Instructional materials should attempt to integrate new material with previously presented information through comparisons and cross-referencing of new and old ideas.