AUSUBEL’S
MEANINGFUL VERBAL
LEARNING/SUBSUMPTI
ON THEORY

DAVID PAUL
AUSUBEL
• Born in 1918 and grew up
in Brooklyn, New York.
• He attended University of
Pennsylvania majoring in
Psychology for pre-med.
• He earned a Ph. D in
Developmental
Psychology from
Columbia University
• His most significant
contribution was on the
development and
research on advance
organizer.

Focus of Ausubel’s Theory
Important factors influencing learning
 Quantity
Clarity
Organization of the learner’s present
knowledge

FACTS
CONCEPTS PROPOSITIONS
THEORIES
RAW PERCEPTUAL
DATA
COGNITIVE
SRUCTURE

 Meaningful learning takes place when an
idea to be learned is related to some sensible
way to ideas that the learner already
possesses.
 Before new material can be presented
effectively, the student’s cognitive structure
must be strengthened.
 Advance Organizers
- the way to strengthened student’s
cognitive structure.
- allow students to already have a bird’s eye
view or to see the big picture of the topic

A process by which new
material is related to
relevant ideas in the
existing cognitive
ADVANCE
ORGANIZERS
SUBSUMPTION

4 PROCESSES FOR MEANINGFUL
LEARNING
 DERIVATIVE SUBSUMPTION
 CORRELATIVE SUBSUMPTION
 SUPERORDINATE LEARNING
 COMBINATORIAL LEARNING

DERIVATIVE SUBSUMPTION
This describes the situation in which the
new information you learn is an example of a
concept that you have already learned.
Example:
Let’s you have acquired a basic concept such
as “bird” . You know that a bird has feathers,
beak and lays egg. Now you learn about a kind
of bird that you have never seen before, let’s

CORRELATIVE SUBSUMPTION
It enriches the higher-level concept.
Example:
You see a new kind of bird that has a really
big body and long strong legs. It doesn’t fly
but it can run fast. You may now include your
concept of an ostrich to your previous concept
of what a bird is.

SUPERORDINATE LEARNING
You already knew a lot of examples of
the concept but did not know the concept
itself until it was taught.
Example:
A child was well acquainted with banana,
mango, guava, etc. but the child did not know,
until she was taught, that these were all
examples of fruits.

COMBINATORIAL LEARNING
This is when newly acquired knowledge
combines with prior knowledge to enrich the
understanding of both concepts.
Example:
To teach someone about how plants
“breathe” you might relate it to previously
acquired knowledge of human respiration
where man inhales oxygen and exhales carbon

ADVANCE
ORGANIZER
A major instructional
tool proposed by David
P. Ausubel.
TWO BENEFITS
You will find it easier to
connect new information
with what you already
know about the topic
You can readily see how
concepts in a certain topic
are related to each other

TYPES OF ADVANCE ORGANIZERS
EXPOSITORY describes the new content.
NARRATIVE presents the new
information in the form of a story to students.
SKIMMING is done by looking over the
new material to gain a basic overview.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZER visuals to set up or
outline the ne information. This may include
pictographs, descriptive patterns, concept
patterns and concept maps.

•

APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES
 The most general ideas of a subject should be
presented first and then progressively
differentiated in terms of detail and
specificity. He called this progressive
differentiation. The purpose of progressive
differentiation is to increase the stability and
clarity of anchoring ideas.
 Instructional materials should attempt to
integrate new material with previously
presented information through comparisons

Reference
-FLCT book
Prepared by : Dawn Jovie O. Gumanit
BEED-1