DAVID AUSUBEL: BIOGRAPHY, THEORY, CONTRIBUTIONS, WORKS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

David Ausubel (October 25, 1918 - July 9, 2008) was an American psychologist, educator, and researcher who worked in areas such as ethnic psychology and the field of learning. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1918, and spent his entire life in the United States working in different universities and therapeutic centers.

David Ausubel's ideas were heavily influenced by those of Jean Piaget, especially those that have to do with conceptual schemes. Ausubel related this theory to his own, in an attempt to better understand the way in which people acquire new knowledge.

David ausubel

For Ausubel, individuals form our knowledge mainly when we are exposed to new information, rather than actively constructing it. Therefore, his ideas would be closer to those of behaviorism than to those of other currents that place greater emphasis on one's own will, such as cognitive psychology.

David Ausubel gained a lot of prestige especially thanks to his theory of meaningful learning, although he also published several works on other related topics and more than 150 scientific articles that were accepted in high quality journals. In 1976 he received the Thorndike Award from the American Psychological Association, due to his important contributions to the educational field.

Biography

Early years

David Paul Ausubel was born on October 25, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. During his first years of study, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he began studying medicine and psychiatry and ended up specializing in psychology.

After graduating from Middlesex University, he was doing his educational internship at Gouveneur Hospital, which was located on the east side of Manhattan, near neighborhoods like Little Italy and Chinatown. During this time, Ausubel was very interested in the treatment of drug addiction, a field to which he devoted many hours of study and therapy.

David Ausubel later spent time serving in the United States Public Health Service as a military man, and was assigned to a United Nations division in Stuttgart, Germany, to work with refugees and others affected by the war. This period marked his life to a great extent, and his professional interests changed in part due to this time.

After his period in Europe, David Ausubel began practicing as a resident psychiatrist in different medical centers in the United States: the Kentucky Public Health Service, the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, and the Bronx Psychiatric Center. At the same time, she obtained her doctorate in developmental psychology from Columbia University.

At the same time he was practicing psychiatry, David Ausubel began teaching psychology classes at various educational centers, including Long Island University and Yeshiva University. A few years later, in 1950, he became the head of the Department of Educational Research at the University of Illinois.

Studies in New Zealand

In 1957 Ausubel received a Fulbright research grant to be able to carry out different studies in New Zealand, where he wanted to contrast his theories on psychological development by conducting cross-cultural research with the country's Maori population. During this time he planted the seeds of what would become his theory of meaningful learning.

Around this time David Ausubel wrote several books, including The Ferns and the Tiki, an American Vision of New Zealand (1960) and Maori Youth, A Psycho-ethnological Study of Cultural Deprivation (1961).

In his books he expressed his belief that Maori educational problems could stem from what he termed "cultural deprivation." On the other hand, he believed that it was necessary to take into account people's cultural differences in psychological investigations, since otherwise the results would never be completely reliable.

Later years

Possibly David Ausubel's most important contribution to the field of psychology was his theory of meaningful learning, one of the pillars of constructivism. His ideas had to do with the very concept of learning, which for him was nothing more than a process by which people try to build meaning for what surrounds us.

In 1973 Ausubel left academic life to dedicate himself entirely to psychiatry. Among his interests in this field we find areas such as ego development, general psychopathology, forensic psychiatry or drug addiction. During his last years he published several books and a large number of specialized articles, which led him to win an important award from the APA.

In 1994 David Ausubel completely retired from professional life, and dedicated his last years of life to writing. From this moment until his death in 2008 he wrote and published four more books.

Meaningful learning theory

Conceptual diagram, one of the pillars of David Ausubel's theory. Source: Public Domain

Theoretical bases

One of the fields to which David Ausubel contributed the most was that of learning, an area in which he was greatly influenced by the ideas of Jean Piaget. Both authors believed that learning does not normally occur through pure memorization, but that it is necessary to relate new concepts and ideas with those already present in the brain.

This is the basis of his theory of meaningful learning: the belief that we only acquire new ideas and knowledge when it is important to us. Thus, for Ausubel the factor that most determines what a person learns is the type of knowledge they already have.

According to this theory, the acquisition of new ideas begins with the observation of events through the ones we already have. All the concepts we have in mind are organized into maps, and the new knowledge we acquire is added to them in a coherent and logical way.

On the other hand, for Ausubel the most efficient way of learning was reception, as opposed to autonomous exploration. According to this author, discovery learning can work to acquire knowledge, but it would be a very slow process with many failures.

Significant learning

David Ausubel's theory focused mainly on the differences between meaningful learning and that which occurs through pure memory. According to him, in order for a person to be able to acquire new knowledge properly, it is necessary to relate it to the concept maps that they already have in their mind.

This idea has a lot to do with Piaget's theory of development, since according to this author the passage between the different stages that a child goes through from birth to adulthood has to do with the abandonment of a mental model and the creation of another new one.

Jean Piaget, one of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology. Source: Unidentified (Ensian published by University of Michigan)

Ausubel explained his theory of meaningful learning by comparing it to memorization, in which new knowledge is attempted to be stored without relating it to previous ones. As a result, they are much more difficult to store in long-term memory and easier to forget over time.

On the other hand, David Ausubel believed that knowledge is organized in a hierarchical way, with some concepts being more relevant in our minds than others. New information will be stored more easily if it can be related to those concepts that have a greater weight in memory.

Advanced organizers

Another of the most important parts of meaningful learning theory is the use of advanced organizers. These would be mechanisms that would help the person to relate the new ideas that are presented to them with those that are already present in their mental schemes, in such a way that it would be easier for them to integrate them.

Advanced organizers could be of two types: comparative and expository. The former would be used to help the person remember information that is already stored and that may be relevant to the learning situation, but that would not be immediately available in the conscious part of memory.

On the other hand, the exhibition organizers are used when the new knowledge does not have a simple relationship with the existing one, and they serve as a bridge between the new ideas and those present in the mental scheme.

Other contributions

Motivation theory

In her studies on learning, Ausubel also stressed the importance of motivating students in acquiring new knowledge. His ideas about motivation are quite different from those of other authors, and they stand out because they focus in part on factors internal to the students themselves.

For example, for Ausubel the need to solve problems or the desire for self-improvement would be important factors that would explain the differences in motivation between students, and therefore also the differences when learning.

This was something unusual at the time, since the rest of constructivist and behaviorist psychologists thought that internal factors hardly mattered and that the only thing that influenced the results that people obtained was their environment.

Plays

- The Ferns and the Tiki, an American vision of New Zealand (1960).

- Maori youth, a psycho-ethnological study of cultural deprivation (1961).

- Ego development and psychopathology (1996).

- The acquisition and retention of knowledge (2000).

- Theory and problems of adolescent development (2002).

- Death and the human condition (2002).

References

1. "David Ausubel" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: April 11, 2020 from Britannica: britannica.com.
2. "Ausubel: Meaningful Learning Theory, Subsumpsion Theory, & Motivational Theory" in: CIMTPrelims Wiki. Retrieved on: April 11, 2020 from CIMTPrelims Wiki: cimtprelims.fandom.com.
3. "Ausubel, David Paul" in: Encyclopedia. Retrieved on: April 11, 2020 from Encyclopedia: encyclopedia.com.
4. "Ausubel's Learning Theory" in: My English Pages. Retrieved on: April 11, 2020 from My English Pages: myenglishpages.com.
5. "David Ausubel" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: April 11, 2020 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.