AUSUBEL AND MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze Ausubel's Theory of Meaningful Learning, seeking to understand teaching-and-learning with meaning. It was understood that significant learning is above all learning by reception, constituting the first phase of a broader assimilation process. For Ausubel, when someone attributes meanings to knowledge based on interaction with their prior knowledge, it establishes significant learning, regardless of whether these meanings are accepted in the subject's context. Meaningful learning does not correspond to formal, validated knowledge. It occurs when certain specific knowledge, existing in the knowledge structure, allows meaning to be given to new knowledge. It was found that meaningful learning and retention are more effective than corresponding memorization, due to the fact that the instructional material in meaningful learning is potentially meaningful. According to Ausubel, everything that is learned must be either retained or forgotten, considering that the process of assimilation in retention-forgetting differs from the process of meaningful learning.