National Autonomous University of Honduras

Faculty of Humanities and Art

School of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Foreign Languages Career

Psychopedagogy
Msc. Rosa Oneyda Palacios Gámez
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 of Piaget.
• 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  Learning is based on the
students learn large representational,
amounts of meaningful superordinate and
material from combinatorial processes
verbal/textual that occur during the
presentations in a reception of information.
learning activities.  A primary process in
 Meaningful learning learning is subsumption
results when new in which new material is
information is acquired by related to relevant ideas
linking the new in the existing cognitive
information in the structure on a non-
learner’s own cognitive verbatim basis (previous
structure 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 Correlative Subsumption

 Describes the  More valuable

situation in which learning than that
the new information of derivative
pupils learn is an
subsumption,
instance or example
since it enriches
of a concept that
pupils have already the higher-level
learned. concept.
Meaningful Learning Theory

Superordinate Learning Combinatorial Learning

 In this case, you  It describes a process

by which the new
already knew a lot idea is derived from
of examples of the another idea that is
comes from his
concept, but you previous knowledge
did not know the (in a different, but
concept until it related, “branch”)
 Students could think
was taught to of this as learning by
pupils analogy
Principles of Ausubel’s
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 Ausubel’s
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
person’s 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.