David Ausubel Research Articles

The promise of new ideas and new technology for improving teaching and learning.

There have been enormous advances in our understanding of human learning in the past three decades. There have also been important advances in our understanding of the nature of knowledge and new knowledge creation. These advances, when combined with the explosive development of the Internet and other technologies, permit advances in educational practices at least as important as the invention of the printing press in 1460. We have built on the cognitive learning theory of David Ausubel and various sources of new ideas on epistemology. Our research program has focused on understanding meaningful learning and on developing better methods to achieve such learning and to assess progress in meaningful learning. The concept map tool developed in our program has proved to be highly effective both in promoting meaningful learning and in assessing learning outcomes. Concept mapping strategies are also proving powerful for eliciting, capturing, and archiving knowledge of experts and organizations. New technology for creating concept maps developed at the University of West Florida permits easier and better concept map construction, thus facilitating learning, knowledge capture, and local or distance creation and sharing of structured knowledge, especially when utilized with the Internet. A huge gap exists between what we now know to improve learning and use of knowledge and the practices currently in place in most schools and corporations. There are promising projects in progress that may help to achieve accelerated advances. These include projects in schools at all educational levels, including projects in Colombia, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, and the United States, and collaborative projects with corporate organizations and distance learning projects. Results to date have been encouraging and suggest that we may be moving from the lag phase of educational innovation to a phase of exponential growth.

Tarefas de casa: reprodução ou construção do conhecimento escolar ?

The present article investigates the practice of the homework inside the educational process, inclassrooms of the first four séries of the fundamental teaching. Having as referencial the notion of significantlearning, proposal and developed by David Ausubel, it analyzes, if the homework would have some contributionin the sense of providing such learning to the student or if it is linked to a mechanical learning. The studyconsidered point of view of the three segments directy invilved in the problem: teachers, parents and students,under interview form. Beginning of those data also of systematic observations in classrooms were analysed, amongother aspects, the purposes of the homework, types and amount. The data show the explanation need to theteachers about the subject, which has not happened in courses of teacher’s formation and in the own educationalliterature.

Start with What the Student Knows or with What the Student Can Imagine?

It almost universally accepted among educators that the best way to present new material to students to connect it to they already know. Mr. Egan questions this principle and suggests that students' imaginations might offer a much more fertile point for learning. IT IS COMMONLY argued that one of the securest findings of educational research that new information, to be best understood, must be attached to knowledge the student already has. Formulations of this finding have been various, but it has been a staple of educational thinking from the time of John Dewey -- and before him of Herbert Spencer -- to the recently published National Research Council monograph How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice.1 I wish to suggest that the common principle of starting where the student is may be both inadequate and restrictive in ways not often discussed. In its place, I suggest we might sensibly adopt a second principle of asking the student can imagine. We can pose this question at any point in the learning process as a point for further inquiry. To show the long influence of the first principle, consider its early articulation in the work of Herbert Spencer and its use John Dewey and others in shaping the curriculum -- in particular in giving a foundation for the social studies curriculum. Spencer argued that children's early and simple experience had to form the basis for all future learning and that there must be a regular and orderly progression from already familiar to slightly less familiar -- an expansion by slow degrees to impressions most nearly allied.2 This principle believed nearly every teacher and professor of education I have encountered. Most people assume that it so obviously true that even to question it suggests a degree of nuttiness. The education reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged teachers to rethink their ways of presenting new material to students in their particular disciplines in accordance with this principle. Thus elementary mathematics would begin from the experience that children had with fruit or with games such as marbles, and language studies would begin with the forms of expression with which children would already be familiar, rather than with a topic like abstract grammar. But subjects such as mathematics and language were still not fully articulated with the meaningful daily interactions of children with their local environments -- what the student What was further proposed was a new, central curriculum area -- the social studies. This was to be a subject that would begin with the material of children's everyday experience -- with themselves and their families and with their neighborhoods and communities. Gradually, student learning would expand from this meaningful core of personal experience to less familiar knowledge, until, in the end, the whole universe of knowledge could be understood as an expansion from was most vivid and meaningful to the child. The social studies curriculum was designed to tie all the knowledge being learned in other curriculum areas to the child's experience. So we must start with most profoundly known the student and build new knowledge on that basis. David Ausubel declared, If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.3 Apart from this slightly odd way of putting Spencer's principle, I think there are four reasons why we might be wary of accepting it. * First, if this a fundamental principle of human learning, there no way the process can begin. * Second, if novelty a problem for human learners, reducing the amount of the novelty doesn't solve the problem. And if we can manage some novelty, why can't we manage more? …

How Teaching Should be Conducted in an IT Era: Back to the Future

In May 2000, at the 4th University Surgeons of Asia Congress, I was asked to explain to an audience of prominent surgeons how teaching would be affected by the recent and future developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs). This was not an exercise in consulting the “Crystal Ball” or a futuristic vision of “2001: a Cyber-Space e-Education Odyssey,” but an overview of sound pedagogical principles that must be imbedded within the prevailing techno-tools, bells and whistles. It is interesting to note the everexpanding evolution of the personal computer and its metamorphosis into an indispensable provider of information, enabling greater social collaboration opportunities than any previous technology. In a recent issue of “The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing”, we are reminded of how far we have come on the technology evolutionary scale.1 In 1977, the popular Digital VAX11/780 minicomputer was five feet tall, cost around US $150,000, weighed hundreds of pounds, contained less than one megabyte of memory, consumed six kilowatts of power, and often needed special air conditioning and a raised floor. It cranked out at one million instructions per second (1 MIPS). Twentythree years later, we find the Compaq iPAQ H3600 handheld computer: five inches tall, weighing about six ounces (including its battery) and costing about US $500. It has 32 megabytes of random access memory (RAM), 16 megabytes of read only memory (ROM), and delivers in the palm of your hand 142-times the computing power of the Digital VAX. Now for the “reality check”: during these last 23 years of escalating computer use in all faculties, its impact on university teaching is still largely a promise.2 Although widespread computer use has brought about the development of interesting applications of computer technologies, such as the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE) at National University of Singapore (NUS) and other e-learning environments, computerassisted pedagogy is not commonplace.3 The integration of ICTs into the university environment has been largely based on the inherent attributes of the technology rather than its role in contributing towards meeting specific learning objectives. During this same period of time, major corporations and government agencies around the world have embraced computer-based training (CBT) as a cost-effective and efficient tool to achieve particular staff training objectives. They also came to recognise the value of using the systematic approach to creating support materials for training: Instructional Systems Design (ISD). ISD proposes instructional models that make use of various instructional strategy components to produce a course of instruction.4 Throughout the years, classical CBT and computer-based learning (CBL) has been designed with reference to learning theories developed by David Ausubel, Albert Bandura and Robert Gagne. Much of today’s pedagogy still adheres to Gagne’s five categories of learning, i.e., intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, motor skills and attitudes; and the vast majority of CBT/CBL produced have been based on his behaviouristic approach. Although most CBT/CBL designs address some or all of Gagne’s nine general instructional events,5 Web-based Learning (WBL) is providing an added social communication aspect not previously available. Gagne’s events of instruction include gaining attention, informing learners of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, presenting the new material (stimulus), providing learning guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback, assessing performance and enhancing retention and transfer. As you can deduce, some of these events are best handled through social interaction in a classroom setting rather than being preconceived and programmed to appear on screen when triggered by the user. In most CBT/CBL, Address reprint requests to Mr. J.A. Gilles Doiron, Principal Educational Technologist, Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260. E-mail: doiron@nus.edu.sg Date of acceptance: 15th February 2001 Asian Journal of Surgery

Ego Development and Psychopathology

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessEgo Development and PsychopathologyDaniel D. Storch,, M.D.Daniel D. Storch,Search for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Jun 1998https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.49.6.844AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This is a hard book to read. The nearly 300 pages are densely written, with no relief offered by case studies or illustrations, and only three tables. However, the author, as he promises, presents a "coherent, self-consistent, and comprehensive" theory of psychopathology and relates it to the current descriptive classification of psychiatric diagnoses. His is a developmental theory with ego preeminent. The central thesis of the book is that "the most significant and critical factors predisposing persons to various mental disorders are critical developmental defects . . . that arise at critical phases of ego development."The book is divided into two main sections. The first part, Ego Development, expounds the theory. The normal progression is that the ego becomes omnipotent in the infant. In solving "the crisis of ego devaluation," the ego of the child "satellizes" (subordinates itself) to the parents and then others in authority, such as teachers. Then the ego must "desatellize" in preadolescence and adolescence in response to the individual's need for "emancipation from the home and preparation to assume the role of a volitionally independent adult in society."The second part, Clinical Applications, is a bit easier to read. The author proceeds to discuss each of the "major"DSM-IVpsychiatric diagnoses within the context of his theory. Anxiety states fit best. Neurotic anxiety, the prototypical disorder, is "a form of developmental anxiety (occurring usually in a nonsatellizing individual with a history of failure in ego devaluation) in which the essential source of the threat to self-esteem arises from a severely impaired sense of adequacy." Other diagnoses follow. For example, depression, mania, reactive (as opposed to process) schizophrenia (schizophreniform disorder), and delusional disorders are the "four basic kinds of 'psychotic' complications" of neurotic anxiety.Ego Development and Psychopathologyincludes interesting clinical points and observations. The need for moral values is repeated. Parents and therapists should lead the way. Parents should not be "overpermissive"; therapists cannot ignore the question of moral judgment. "Behavior and ethics are inextricably bound together." Delinquency is a "moral problem."The author is not afraid of controversy. For example, he takes our culture to task for not providing children with opportunity for socially responsible participation and for discrepancies between "the professed (official) moral ideology" and "the simultaneous overvaluation of aggressiveness, prestige, and success at any price."The book jacket identifies David Ausubel as distinguished professor emeritus at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, evaluating psychiatrist for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and also in private practice. The book "is addressed chiefly to . . . the primary diagnosticians and therapists of mentally ill individuals." The author also hopes other intellectuals will be interested.I admit I am a pragmatic eclectic in my approach and concrete in my thinking. In reading a book such as this, I find my own psychological-mindedness exercised and stretched and, correspondingly, my work with patients showing more insight, with better results and mutual satisfaction. In summary, the book was hard to read, requiring time and serious study, but worth the effort.Dr. Storch is clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and medical director of the Riverwood Center of the Howard County Health Department in Columbia, Maryland.by David P. Ausubel; New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Publishers, 1996, 301 pages, $49.95 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 49Issue 6 June 1998Pages 844-844 Metrics History Published online 1 June 1998 Published in print 1 June 1998

The influence of content organization on student's cognitive structure in thermodynamics

AbstractTwo different approaches to the content of thermodynamics were used in an introductory college physics course: one was the traditional organization found in most textbooks on the subject, the other was based on the learning theory of David Ausubel. The influence of these different content organizations on the student's cognitive structure was investigated using a word association test which was analysed through hierarchical clustering analysis. Research findings suggest that the approach based on Ausubel's theory influences the student's cognitive structure in such a way that their conceptual hierarchies are more coherent with the basic laws and the conceptual structure of the subject matter.

ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN A PSI COLLEGE PHYSICS COURSE USING AUSUBEL'S LEARNING THEORY AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR CONTENT ORGANIZATION

ABSTRACT The learning theory of David Ausubel was used as a theoretical framework to guide the content organization of an experimental PSI (Personalized System of Instruction) course in physics. Several evaluation strategies were used and suggest that the combination between PSI as a method of instruction and Ausubel's theory as a theoretical framework for content organization is possible and might result in better learning outcomes in terms of concept learning. *Work partially supported by CAPES, CNPq and FINEP (Brazil).

A Note on Sex and Economic Education

1. David Ausubel, The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning. New York: Grune and Stratton, Inc., 1963. 2. Donald Campbell and Julian Stanley, and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research, Handbook of Research on Teaching, N. L. Gage, Ed. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1963. 3. N. L. Gage, Ed., Handbook of Research on Teaching, Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1963. 4. Joint Council on Economic Education, Test of Understanding in College Economics. New Yotk: The Psychological Corporation, 1968. 5. B. J. Winer, Statistical Principles in Experimental Design. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1962.

A LOGICAL MODEL FOR CONCEPTUALIZING AND OTHER RELATED ACTIVITIES*

Educational TheoryVolume 13, Issue 4 p. 277-284 A LOGICAL MODEL FOR CONCEPTUALIZING AND OTHER RELATED ACTIVITIES† KENNETH B. HENDERSON, KENNETH B. HENDERSON Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.Search for more papers by this author KENNETH B. HENDERSON, KENNETH B. HENDERSON Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.Search for more papers by this author First published: October 1963 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1963.tb00145.xCitations: 1 † *I am grateful to my colleagues, David Ausubel, Steven Szabo, and Clifford Tremblay, for their suggestions which helped me clarify my ideas. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume13, Issue4October 1963Pages 277-284 RelatedInformation

The Mathematical Association of America

s and Biographies of Speakers The Mysterious Arithmetic of Lexicographic Codes John H. Conway, Princeton University The Mathematical Association of America Integral lexicographic codes are very simply defined (by a “greedy algorithm”), but have strange arithmetical properties that are hidden in a theorem I call “The Lexicode Theorem.” I'll tell you what the theorem says, and together we'll puzzle out what (if anything) it means. New Jersey Section Spring Meeting Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ Saturday, March 27, 2004 2 John H. Conway is John von Neumann Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, NJ. Born in Liverpool, England, he received his education at the University of Cambridge and then taught at Cambridge for many years before joining the Princeton faculty in 1986. Conway is the author or co-author of at least ten books, and of many expository articles which have had substantial impact not just on research mathematicians but on mathematical amateurs as well. Conway has a rare gift for naming mathematical objects, and for inventing useful mathematical notations. He is widely known for his discovery of surreal numbers, the Conway group, and for inventing the Game of Life. Conway is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and recipient of the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society (1971), Polya Prize of the London Mathematical Society (1987), Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize (1999), Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society (2000), and Joseph Priestley Award (2001). He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool on July 4, 2001. Designing the Pre-service Teacher Curriculum to Better Meet the Needs of Our Future Teachers Mercedes McGowen, William Rainey Harper College David Ausubel claimed that “the single most important factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.” How do we determine what a student already knows and then use the evidence of learning that we collect to improve our teaching and student learning? What classroom experiences foster the development of mathematical thinking—pattern recognition, generalization, abstraction, problem solving, careful analysis, rigorous argument and flexible thinking? Designing a curriculum that builds on students’ prior knowledge to develop these skills effectively and at appropriate levels for all students is one of the biggest and most important challenges we face. To address these questions, we will analyze some mathematical tasks that illustrate how mathematical