ABSTRACT
Ausubel is one of a number of psychologists who have attempted to draw together cognitive and behaviourist perspectives. In his discussion of reception and discovery learning, reception learning is more likely to benefit from interpretation in behaviourist terms, whereas discovery learning is related to principles advocated by cognitive psychology. The view of cognitive psychologists that children are able to discover knowledge has its justification in observations of spontaneous learning through play and activity. Piaget’s conclusions for example, that thinking and intelligence develop from actions upon objects and events in everyday life, have lead to the suggestion that children should experience discovery methods in the classroom. In contrast to this arguments for learning based on ‘rote learning’ sees learning as received and allows no interpretation on the part of the learner. This implies that learning is merely a process of accretion, a continual adding on of new knowledge. Such learning is often seen as didactic, delivered in verbal terms.
In this extract from Ausubel, it becomes clear that the distinction between rote and active learning is not simple and that it is inaccurate to assume that material presented verbally is necessarily rote in nature. Concepts may be meaningfully incorporated into a learners’ understanding or they can be rote and meaningless. It depends upon what is already understood by the learner and how the new learning is presented. The teacher’s task is to present new learning in a meaningful way, linking it to existing understanding. In this way positive transfer from old to new learning is more likely to take place and by implication making the new understanding more readily available for application.
