meaningful learning

The concept of meaningful learning is due to the cognitive psychologist David Paul Ausubel (1968) ; According to this postulate, to learn a concept, there must initially be a basic amount of information about it, which acts as background material for the new information.

Summary

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• 1 Various definitions
• 2 Basic Ideas of Meaningful Learning
• 3 Steps to Take to Promote Meaningful Learning
• 4 External links
• 5 Sources

Various definitions

Meaningful learning is understood as that which takes place when the learner links the new information with the one they already have, readjusting and reconstructing both information in this process. In other words, the structure of prior knowledge conditions new knowledge and experiences, and these, in turn, modify and restructure those.

Meaningful learning is Learning in which teachers create an instructional environment in which students understand what they are learning. Meaningful learning is what leads to Transfer . This learning serves to use what has been learned in new situations, in a different context, so that more than memorizing it is necessary to understand. Meaningful learning is thus opposed to Mechanistic Learning . It is understood by the work that a teacher does for his students.

Basic Ideas of Meaningful Learning

1. Previous knowledge must be related to those that you want to acquire in a way that works as a base or support point for the acquisition of new knowledge.
2. It is necessary to develop extensive metacognition knowledge to integrate and organize the new knowledge.
3. It is necessary that the new information is incorporated into the mental structure and becomes part of the comprehensive memory.
4. Meaningful learning and mechanistic learning are not two opposite types of learning, but rather complement each other during the teaching process. They can occur simultaneously in the same learning task. For example, the memorization of multiplication tables is necessary and would be part of mechanistic learning, however its use in problem solving would correspond to meaningful learning.
5. It requires an active participation of the student where the attention is focused on how the learning is acquired.
6. It is intended to empower the learner to build their own learning, leading them towards autonomy through a scaffolding process. The ultimate intention of this learning is to get the student to acquire the competence of learning to learn.
7. Meaningful learning can occur through the presentation of the content by the teacher or by the student’s discovery.

Meaningful learning deals with the assimilation and accommodation of concepts. It is a process of articulation and integration of meanings. By virtue of the propagation of activation to other concepts of the hierarchical structure or conceptual network, it can be modified to some degree, generally in the sense of expansion, readjustment or cognitive restructuring, constituting an enrichment of the learning knowledge structure.

The different relationships that are established in the new knowledge and those already existing in the cognitive structure of learning, entail the emergence of meaning and understanding.

In summary, meaningful learning is that which:

• It is permanent: The learning we acquire is long-term.
• It produces a cognitive change, it goes from a situation of not knowing to knowing.
• It is based on experience, it depends on prior knowledge.

Steps to take to promote meaningful learning

• Provide productive Feedback , to guide the learner and instill intrinsic motivation.
• Provide familiarity.
• Explain by examples.
• Guide the cognitive process.
• Promote learning strategies.
• Create a cognitive situated learning .

The Theory of Meaningful Learning has been developed and consolidated at the mercy of different investigations and theoretical elaborations in the field of the cognitive paradigm, showing coherence and effectiveness.