1. David Ausubel
David Ausabel is a cognitive psychologist who studied learning theory. Ausabel is credited
with the learning theory of advanced organizers*. This theory is easily applicable to second
language acquisition, but transcends a singular application, to application across educational
domains.
* Advance Organizer entails the use of introductory materials with a high level of generality
that introduce new material and facilitate learning by providing an "anchoring idea" to which
the new idea can be attached .
Ausabel, along instructional scientists Robert Gagné, Leslie Briggs, David Merrill,
Albert Bandura, Benjamin Bloom, Walter Dick, and others developed the systems approach
which utilizes research on the conditions of learning required for people to achieve clearly
defined performance outcomes. The model is based upon and has grown out of a thorough
understanding of learning theory and research.
Ausabel believes that meaningful learning is crucial for classroom instruction. Meaningful
learning, according to Ausabel, entails new knowledge that relates to what one already knows
and that can easily retained and applied.

2. David Ausubel
Cognitive theorists believe that it is essential to relate new knowledge to existing information
learned. Teachers can facilitate learning by organizing information presented so that new
concepts are easily relatable to concepts already learned. Examples of devices that may be
used include: pictures, titles of stories, reviews of previously learned concepts, short video
segments, a paradigm, a grammar rule, etc. (direct quote from David Ausubel's Cognitive
Learning Theory).
Ausabel broke down the process of learning to three steps: what will the person learn, what
the person wants to learn, and what did the person learn?
Ausabel, along with McLaughlin and Ellis, contend that mental structure or organization of
knowledge highly influences learning. These theorists grounded their research on the work
of Jean Piaget. Piaget believed that people actively "organize experience" (online quote from
Omaggio, p. 55). New information must be integrated into the mental structure to be learned.
Human learning entails strategies for thinking, understanding, remembering and producing
language. Language proficiency depends on understanding, integrating, organizing
,practicing, and automizing subskills needed to communicate. Restructuring (reorganizing
existing mental structure to accommodate new knowledge) and automatization (the routine
performance of a skill or subskill without thinking about it) are central to developing language
proficiency (pp ).

3. David Ausubel Subsumption Theory (D. Ausubel)
Ausubel's theory is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material
from verbal/textual presentations in a school setting (in contrast to theories developed in the
context of laboratory experiments). According to Ausubel, learning is based upon the kinds
of superordinate, representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception
of information. A primary process in learning is subsumption in which new material is related to
relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure on a substantive, non-verbatim basis.
Cognitive structures represent the residue of all learning experiences; forgetting occurs because
certain details get integrated and lose their individual identity.
A major instructional mechanism proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance organizers:
"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." (1963 , p. 81).

4. David Ausubel
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 of the material. Organizers act as a subsuming bridge between new
learning material and existing related ideas.
Ausubel's theory has commonalities with Gestalt theories and those that involve schema
(e.g., Bartlett) as a central principle. There are also similarities with Bruner's "spiral learning“
model , although Ausubel emphasizes that subsumption involves reorganization of existing
cognitive structures not the development of new structures as constructivist theories suggest
Ausubel was apparently influenced by the work of Piaget on cognitive development.
Principles:
1. The most general ideas of a subject should be presented first and then progressively
differentiated in terms of detail and specificity.
2. Instructional materials should attempt to integrate new material with previously presented
information through comparisons and cross-referencing of new and old ideas.

5. David Ausubel

6. David Ausubel
Books:
1.The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. Orlando, FL: Grune & Stratton, 1963
(Italian edition, 1966.) 2. Readings in the Psychology of Cognition. (Co-editor with R. C. Anderson.) New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, (German
edition, 1974.) (2nd edition, 1978.) (Spanish edition, 1977.) (2nd German edition, 1980.) (Italian edition, 1978.) (Portuguese
edition, 1980.) (Romanian edition, 1981.) (2nd Spanish edition, 1982). 4. School Learning: An Introduction to Educational Psychology. (With Floyd C. Robinson.
New York: Holt, Rinehart & WInston, (British edition, 1971.) (Japanese edition, with A. Yoshida, 1984.) (Australian
edition, 1972.) (Romanian edition, 1973.) 5. Psychology in Teacher Preparation. (With John Herbert.) Toronto: The Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, 1969.
Refrences: