David Ausubel

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Lore & Background

David Ausubel was born on October 25, 1918, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He was the nephew of the Jewish historian Nathan Ausubel. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with honors in 1939 with a bachelor's degree majoring in psychology. He later graduated from medical school in 1943 at Middlesex University and completed a rotating internship at Gouverneur Hospital on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbia University in 1950. He served with the U.S. Public Health Service, worked in Germany after World War Two in the medical treatment of displaced persons, and served as a psychiatrist in Veterans Administration hospitals. In 1957 he won a Fulbright Research Grant to study in New Zealand, where his most noteworthy publication was The Fern and the Tiki, in which he made several controversial claims that Māori people were discriminated against in the country. He held professorships at the University of Illinois (1950–1966), University of Toronto (1966–1968), and the City University of New York, where he stayed until his retirement from academic life in 1973. In 1976, he received the Thorndike Award from the American Psychological Association for "Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education." In 1994, at age 75, he retired from professional life to devote himself full-time to writing, publishing four books including Death and the Human Condition (2002), in which he wrote about the psychology of death and expressed his view that "the relevance and value of faith should certainly not be derogated or treated pejoratively, as atheists, agnostics, and rationalists tend to do."

Reader's Guide

Ausubel's central contribution is the concept of advance organizers, which are information presented by an instructor that helps the student organize new incoming information by directing attention to what is important, highlighting relationships, and providing a reminder about relevant prior knowledge. He distinguished between two kinds: comparative organizers, which activate existing schemas and act as reminders to bring relevant knowledge into working memory, and expository organizers, which provide new knowledge that students will need to understand upcoming unfamiliar material. Ausubel emphasized meaningful learning over rote memorization, stating in the preface to his book Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View: "The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly." He was influenced by Jean Piaget and was a critic of discovery-based teaching techniques, arguing that "valid evidence of this nature is virtually nonexistent." Advance organizers have faced criticism for vague definition and construction, but Ausubel defended them by noting that construction "always depends on the nature of the learning material, the age of the learner, and his degree of prior familiarity with the learning passage." He also argued that advance organizers differ from overviews "in being relatable to presumed ideational content in the learner's current cognitive structure."

Did You Know?

• Ausubel graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1939 with a bachelor's degree majoring in psychology.
• He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbia University in 1950.
• In 1957 he won a Fulbright Research Grant to study in New Zealand, where he published The Fern and the Tiki, making controversial claims about discrimination against Māori people.
• He received the Thorndike Award from the American Psychological Association in 1976 for 'Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education'.
• In 1994, at age 75, he retired from professional life to devote himself full-time to writing, publishing four books including Death and the Human Condition (2002).