From Ausubel To Pozo: Review To Good Learning

From Ausubel to Pozo: Review to Good Learning

Questioning the functioning of educational models and systems seems to be an endless practice. Question, then, if the methods are adequate to specify the teaching-learning process takes us a complete review of the methods used and even the way in which they are executed. 

The understanding of the theories that support the use of methods and the approach of educational models implies the first step to answer the questions about the functioning of the educational process. It is necessary to point out that the existence of the two educational processes in which the human being is involved during much of the life cycle is taken into account. 

The first of these is the implicit learning (or also called informal) that is obtained through daily experience when interacting with the next environment;In this, a didactic planning or sequence is not involved that meet specific objectives, it is simply presented by the only fact of adapting to the subjects to the social world.

The other is identified as an explicit (or formal education) learning, in which the teacher serves as an important instructor and agent in the transmission of planned knowledge, values and practices, structured and systematized. Analyze implicit learning processes would mean complicated sociocultural processes, which deviate us from the main trial theme. 

Explicit learning is the one worth addressing. Why despite the existence of existing theories, models and methods, this is hindered when putting it into practice? The cognitive conception of learning has contributed strong criticism to the traditional educational model, in which the mental structures that students and teachers possess and that are at stake within when they carry out teaching and learning are completely ignored.

This openly demands a paradigmatic change in the way in which education is thought and the way in which its processes develop. This traditional thought directed education towards a path in which the student had a role of passive and inexperienced agent that practically has a single cognitive process: memorization. Ausubel’s theory of assimilation finds abandoned and fate aspects for traditional educators. Ausubel schematizes the teaching and learning process taking into consideration that this process must represent a unique and adequate experience in the student, where the teacher serves as an assistant who helps the realization of learning. How does Ausubel manage to schematize an experience in the student? 

Any human process that undergoes analysis should not overlook the contents obtained throughout life. The learning that was obtained in the past is not an isolated result that will remain hidden in cognitive schemes, rather they are the pillar that will support the new learning. The assimilation process consists in anchoring the new contents seen in class to the previous contents acquired by the student. 

The result of the correct execution of this process is learning itself: the modification of cognitive structures that are reflected in the durable change of behavior. Knowing and recognizing previous experiences and knowledge previously founded in the student serves as a tool to the teacher who could use two different ways: 

1) Identify the educational needs of the student, the starting point of the class and the relevant strategies to specify the teaching, and 

2) Convert this process into an appropriate experience to the student, and thus ensure that it is not only a new concept in the repertoire, but also introjected what has been learned and retain it. 

So far, a new question is added: what should the student do once the anchoring of new knowledge is specified with the previous? 

The real problem of education is that the demands over time are changing and today teaching demands much more than having the specific knowledge of its discipline. In the case of higher education, for example, the country’s universities must train expert professionals and capable of implementing the knowledge they have acquired in the classrooms, in addition to developing in each of its students the necessary attitudes to exercise their profession. 

Ausubel states that learning is transferred to a different field in which it occurs in the first instance in the teaching -learning process. That is, transfer it to an applied field where the student can put it into practice and solve a concrete problem, where he is the main agent creating applied knowledge, based on a previous approach in the classroom. Thus, knowledge, rather than simply transmitted and memorized, becomes a student’s own experience by relating the new to what has already been established. Learning is merely progressive. What Ausubel considers as a meaningful learning. 

If this is introjected in the subject, the transfer of learning is directed to the resolution of concrete problems. Take it to a real scenario, where experience would also lead to a new accommodation of the cognitive structure if this practice looks, in the same way, as a new knowledge. Pozo understands what Ausubel raised, and argues that if the teacher, and even an institution, intends to achieve this, he must meet certain characteristics that will lead them to what he calls good learning. In the first instance, good learning must mean a change in student structures. 

Previous learning has resulted in a structure that directs the student’s behavior and the way he perceives his reality. New knowledge does not discard these structures, rather they complement, modify and integrate their new way of behaving (learning). Then, the modification of the structures would imply an introjection of knowledge (to make the subjects, concepts and visions of the world) in the student. 

Therefore, the teacher must allow (create spaces and strategies) that this learning is transferred to real fields and problem solving. The result is a quality practice (or exercise), which means significant learning, which will hardly be forgotten, since it is now part of the total conception of the subject that he learned. This is a good learning. Even these characteristics are totally permeated from the Ausubelian conception of learning: modify cognitive structures, transfer knowledge to problem solving and resulting in a quality practice. 

Conclusions 

If firsthand we question the result of the educational practice that is carried out day by day, and followed by this, an analysis of the practical and theoretical contributions of education is carried out, it is visible that the educational exercise is notausubelian conceptions headed. Perhaps the curricular designs and the proposals for the realization of didactic sequences and their strategies to achieve learning are built from the contributions of Ausubel and Pozo. 

But why do current education continue to question? Should the educational model be changed or to those who put it into practice? Educational institutions must, therefore, be strictly reviewed to know if the curriculum or the model is carried out. Does the teaching instruction truly modify the student’s structures? 

Does the institution have the infrastructure to transfer knowledge? Is students give the opportunity to carry out practices that demonstrate and evaluate the educational process in the classrooms? They will hardly achieve the objectives that Ausubel and Pozo pose in education if the institutions that regulate educational practice are not interested in solving the infrastructure and development needs of the teaching staff. 

Bibliographic references 

• Well, j. (2008). Apprentices and teachers. The cognitive psychology of learning. Madrid: Editorial Alliance. Sánchez, i. & Ramis, F. (2004). 
• Meaningful learning based on problems. Educational horizons, no. 9, pp. 101-111. Available at: http: // www.Redalyc.org/pdf/979/97917171011.PDF Serrano, J. & Pons, R. (2008). 
• The constructivist conception of instruction. Towards a rethinking of the interactive triangle. Mexican Educational Research Magazine, Vol. 13, no. 38, pp.681-712. Viera, t. (2003). 
• Ausubel’s significant verbal learning. Some considerations from the cultural historical approach. Universities, no. 26, pp. 37-43. Available at: https: // www.Redalyc.org/pdf/373/37302605.PDF