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ABSTRACT
Developing thinking skills in students requires specific instruction and practice rather
than application. Students should apply their previous knowledge in order to get new
ones or strengthen them and teachers should address analysis, evaluation and
synthesis using advance organizers to encourage and help pupils to operate at higher
levels of abstraction.
Cognitive structures help students retain information in long term and subsumptions
provide them to build new concepts using basic structures.
Knowledge is organized in a hierarchical fashion. The most general ideas forming the
apex, and more particular ideas and specific details subsumed under them. Learning
occurs as potentially meaningful material enters the student's mind and interacts with
appropriate subsuming concepts. Learners who have well-organized cognitive
systems tend to efficiently retain information. On the other hand, learners who have
poorly organized cognitive systems tend to rapidly forget information.
The teacher provides appropriate advance organizers; present the new material in an
organized fashion, provides sufficient practice (drill), and guides the student through a
problem solving situation that utilizes higher order thinking skills. If the teacher is
successful applying them, so students can take the correct way to improve their
knowledge.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Ausubels contributions to learning psychology.
2. Meaningful verbal learning.
2.1. Reception
2.2. Discovery
3. Advanced organizer.
3.1. Comparative organizers
3.2. Expository organizers
4. Subsumption theory.
4.1. Correlative subsumtion
4.2. Derivative subsumption
4.3. Anchoring
5. Retention and forgetting
5.1. Retention
5.2. Forgetting
Reception
2.2.
Discovery
Ausubel contends that those who stand behind discovery learning and criticize
expository teaching are missing most important point. That is, whether the
method of learning is discovery or reception does not determine the
meaningfulness of the material.
3. Advanced organizers
(Ausubel, 1963) The most controversial and noteworthy method Ausubel has
introduced is "advanced organizers." These are not merely previews of the
subject material that is to be presented. Advanced organizers are more
general, abstract concepts that will provide the great context to which the new
information can be subsumed and anchored. For example, before introducing
a lesson on brown bears a teacher might have her students read a history and
geography of Admiralty Island. By providing this advanced organizer, students
may have a better chance of organizing the information regarding the brown
bears habitat, territorial patterns, and nutrition.
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.
(Fitzgerald, 1962) Advance organizers are believed to have different results for
good versus slow learners. Because most good learners already have the
ability to organize new information, the organizers have little additional effect.
But for slow learners, Ausubel and Fitzgerald believe that organizers are
extremely helpful as this group of students needs additional help structuring
their thinking.
Comparative Organizers
Expository Organizers
Expository organizers are often used when the new learning material is
unfamiliar to the learner. They often relate what the learner already knows with
the new and unfamiliar material. This in turn is aimed to make the unfamiliar
material more plausible to the learner.
4. Subsumption theory
Correlative subsumption
Derivative subsumption
Anchoring
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Retention
What is the best way of improving the retention of information once it has been
learned? Ausubel's (1962) views of retention are linked to his larger theory of
subsumption. Subsumers, anchoring ideas, help to facilitate learning and
retention. Retention is influenced by three factors: "the availability in cognitive
structure of relevant subsuming concepts at an appropriate level of
inclusiveness; (b) the stability and clarity of these concepts; and their
discriminability from the learning task". Learners who possess well organized
cognitive structures tend to retain information effectively. Conversely, learners
who have poorly organized cognitive systems tend to forget information rapidly.
"`rhus," concludes Ausubel (1968), "it is largely by strengthening relevant
aspects of cognitive structure that new learning and retention can be
facilitated". One way of improving retention is to introduce appropriate
subsumers prior to presenting the new lesson.
5.2.
Forgetting
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Ausubel (1968), when the new information is "reduced to the least common
denominator capable of representing it, namely, to the anchoring idea itself".
REFERENCES
ARTICLES
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PERSONAL APPRAISAL
I would like to star with this Ausubel thought:
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The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already
knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly (Ausubel, 1968)
I agree with Ausubel because is very important what learners have as previous
knowledge in order that they can improve the information they acquired during their
lives.
David Ausebel mentions that the knowledge that the student has in its cognitive
structure related to the topic learned is the most important factor for optimal learning.
Another important factor is the preconceptions (spontaneous knowledge of
something) they can determine the success or failure in learning; the preconceptions
are rooted in the cognitive structure.
Students learn by meaningful learning. It means that pupils incorporate new
information to the cognitive structure of the student. This will create assimilation
between the knowledge that the individual possesses in its cognitive structure with
the new information, so this facilitates learning.
The knowledge is not as well as in the mental structure, it has taken a process
because in the learners mind there is an organizational network of ideas, concepts,
relationships, information, linked between. And when it reaches new information, this
can be assimilated to the existing conceptual structure, which, however, will be
modified as a result of the assimilation process.
A major instructional mechanism proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance
organizers. 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 to the material. Organizers
help to link new learning material with existing related ideas.
A primary process in learning is subsumption in which new material is related to
relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure on a non-verbatim basis. Meaningful
learning results when new information is acquired by linking the new information in
the learner's own cognitive structure.
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In conclusion, learners should use their previous knowledge to gat new ones, but they
need to focus on what they are learning and how because sometimes students can
store information in short term or long term, this depends on students attention and if
they like what they will learn. Teachers play an important role in students learning
because they have to use materials, realia, and cognitive resources to help them and
facilitate learning. Ausubels theory focus on learning by linking experiences and new
information that students can acquire during life.
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