AUSUBEL’S

MEANINGFUL
VERBAL LEARNING
SUBSUMPTION THEORY
 David Paul Ausubel
• is an American psychologist and educator. He was born in the United States,
New York in October 25, 1918, and died July 9, 2008. Ausubel went to the
University of Pennsylvania to get his bachelor degree in Psychology and Pre-Med,
and he graduated in 1939. Then he graduated from medical school in 1943 at
Middlesex University. Then he earned his PhD in Developmental Psychology from
Columbia University in 1950. He served as a faculty in several university and
retired from the academic work in 1973. Then he started to practice psychiatry.
• Ausubel was influenced by the teaching of Jean Piaget. His ideas are similar to
Piaget's ideas of conceptual schemes; Ausubel related this to his explanation of
how people acquire the knowledge.
• David Ausubel theorized that "People acquire[d] knowledge primarily by being
exposed directly to it rather than through discover"
• In Ausubel's view, to learn meaningfully, students must relate
new knowledge (concepts and propositions) to what they
already know. He proposed the notion of an advanced
organizer as a way to help students link their ideas with new
material or concepts.
• Ausubel's theory of learning claims that new concepts to be learned can
be incorporated into more inclusive concepts or ideas. These more
inclusive concepts or ideas are advance organizers. Advance organizers
can be verbal phrases (the paragraph you are about to read is about
Albert Einstein), or a graphic. In any case, the advance organizer is
designed to provide, what cognitive psychologists call, the "mental
scaffolding: to learn new information.
 AUSUBEL’S
SUBSUMPTION THEORY
MEANINGFUL RECEPTION FOUR PROCESS FOR
ADVANCE ORGANIZERS
OF INFORMATION MEANINGFUL LEARNING

LEARNER’S COGNITIVE
DERIVATIVE SUBSUMPTION EXPOSITORY
STRUCTURE

USE OF ADVANCE GRAPHIC CORRELATIVE SUBSUMPTION NARRATIVE

ORGANIZER

SUPERORDINATE LEARNING SKIMMING

SUBSUMPTION

COMBINATORIAL LEARNING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

• ACCORDING TO DAVID AUSUBEEL, KNOWLEDGE IS
HIERARCHICALLY ORGANIZED, AND NEW INFORMATION
CAN BE ATTACHED/ ANCHORED TO WHAT IS ALREADY
KNOWN. ONCE A LEARNER SUCCESSFULLY ATTACHED THIS
NEW INFORMATION TO THEIR EXISTING KNOWLEDGE,
THIS IS WHERE MEANINGFUL RECEPTION OF
INFORMATION TAKES PLACE.
 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
PICTOGRAPGHS, DESCRIPTIVE PATTERNS,
CONCEPT PATTERNS, CONCEPT MAPS
DO YOU HAVE ANY
QUESTIONS AND
CLARIFICATIONS ?
THANK
YOU!