David Paul Ausubel, creator of the theory of meaningful learning, was a leading psychologist and pedagogue in educational psychology and constructivism. Thanks to his theory, we realize that meaningful learning is not as simple as we usually think. It does not only consist of acquiring knowledge through study or experience, but goes beyond that. It is not a dichotomous question (all or nothing, we learn or we do not learn), but rather it is about the degree of significance with which we learn, which depends on the quality and quantity of the links that we establish between previous knowledge and what we are learning. In other words, it is a continuum from highest to lowest significance.
If you dedicate yourself to teaching, are a mother or father or are simply interested in learning from childhood to adulthood, this article from Psicología-Online: Ausubel’s theory of meaningful learning gives you the opportunity to delve deeper into meaningful learning.
According to the theory proposed by Ausubel, The learning of people, regardless of their age, depends on your previous cognitive structure, which is linked to new information< Cognitive structures being the mental representations (set of ideas and concepts) that the person builds on a part of reality, since it refers to a personal construction and, therefore, is not real.
Ausubel said that: “If I had to reduce all educational psychology to a single principle, I would state this: The most important factor that influences learning is what the student already knows. Find this out and teach him accordingly.”
For this reason, it is of utmost importance to know the cognitive structure of the students. It is not only about knowing the amount of information that the student knows, but What are the concepts and propositions that you master?< This fact allows for a better orientation of the educational task, leaving behind the concept of “blank minds, blank slate or starting from scratch”, and taking into account that Prior knowledge affects the learning of new concepts and, therefore, everything previous should be taken advantage of to benefit the students’ meaningful learning.
What is meaningful learning
People learn significantly when a connecting link between prior knowledge and new information that we are learning, and once learned, it becomes retained in our cognitive structure, so that it can later be related to new information. Therefore, prior knowledge plays the role of anchor point with the new information.
Thus, teachers should ensure that students can establish relationships between what they already knew previously with what they must learn. It should be noted that it is common to modify previous knowledge as new information is learned. That is, when previous knowledge is linked to new knowledge, it can modify erroneous information about the former.
Meaningful learning strategies
There are different types of learning strategies. Here we will focus on meaningful learning strategies, which must have these three fundamental conditions:
The learning content material must be potentially logically significant, referring to the inherent characteristics of the material to be learned and its nature. That is to say, The content must be presented in an orderly, structured, cohesive manner among others.
The learning content must be potentially significant from a psychological point of view, taking into account pre-existing knowledge of each and every one of the students in the classroom.
Students must show a favorable predisposition to learn significantly.
According to these conditions for meaningful learning set by Ausubel, the role of the teacher or his interaction with his students and content is not taken into account. Thus, if we wanted to consider his role in the acquisition of meaningful learning, we could say that it is the teacher who must present the content in an orderly, structured and cohesive way. Furthermore, in order to enhance the link between knowledge, the teacher could, for example, propose an activity to discover the knowledge of your students related to the new content and, from here, know how to organize the information to adapt it to the needs of each student. Finally, it might be beneficial for the teacher Promote a positive climate within the classroom that encourages students to learn in a meaningful way.
Meaningful learning strategies: building cognitive structures
How to build cognitive structures? The ideal way to explain how we build our cognitive structures is given by Piaget’s balancing mechanism, which has assimilation, accommodation, adaptation and balance< The learning process is what facilitates the construction of these structures and, therefore, gives rise to the Piaget equilibration mechanism of Piaget's learning theory.
We have cognitive structures at any age and in relation to any learning content, although these may be poor, erroneous or insufficient, but there is some point of connection between prior knowledge and new information.
With prior knowledge, we face new content to learn. Given all this, there is an assimilation process, where a link is created between previous knowledge and new content. But there are situations in which no link is found, so, in this case, we would find ourselves in a cognitive imbalance, without obtaining significant learning. This produces discomfort and anxiety, which is why, in order to reduce or eliminate these feelings, a accommodation process, which consists of beginning to create new schemes, modify the previous ones, expand them, restructure them, eliminate them, and so on. In other words, it is a restructuring of cognitive structures. On the other hand, if we find prior knowledge that fits with the new information, significant learning will occur, which will give rise, as Piaget mentioned, to a major rebalancing, that is, to a higher level.
It is necessary to emphasize that there is no accommodation without assimilation, since accommodation is a restructuring of assimilation and the balance between these is adaptation.
Piaget does not emphasize significant learning in his theory, according to him, it is about increasing knowledge. In this sense, an increase in knowledge (significant learning) only occurs when the assimilation scheme presents an accommodation.
If you want to know more learning strategies, here you will find metacognitive skills and strategies in learning.
Examples of meaningful learning
Below, we show situations that we can take as examples of meaningful learning, to better understand what this type of learning is, both in children and adults.
Examples of meaningful learning in children
In a kindergarten class they begin to work with vegetables. In it prior knowledge It appears to a child that broccoli is a green vegetable, and they may mistakenly generalize this knowledge to all vegetables, thinking that they are all green. When the teacher explains that cauliflower is a vegetable, the student modifies their schemes (accommodation) to add that the vegetables are not all green and include all the ones that the teacher mentions.
On the other hand, if the student had known that there are many vegetables of different colors and one of them is white, round and with some green leaves, when the teacher describes cauliflower, the student will find a connecting link between previous knowledge and new so that it will only modify the name of that vegetable of which it knew the characteristics but not the name, giving rise to significant learning.
Examples of meaningful learning in adults
In a driving school theory class they are talking about traffic signs. An empty danger sign appears on the board, and automatically, a student’s prior knowledge is linked to what she sees in that sign< Well, their prior knowledge includes, separately, the physical characteristics of a cow and that a triangle in circulation means danger. Therefore, he significantly learns that that sign means that he is in danger because he may encounter cows on the road and, therefore, he must watch her speed.
This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
Ausubel, D. (1983). Theory of meaningful learning
Moreira, MA, Caballero, MC and Rodríguez, ML (orgs.). (1997). TOminutes of the International Meeting on Meaningful Learning
