Mastering Meaningful Learning: Concepts and Strategies
Types of Meaningful Learning
It is important to emphasize that meaningful learning is not a “mere connection” of new information with existing cognitive structures. In contrast, only rote learning is a “simple connection,” arbitrary and not substantive. Meaningful learning involves the modification and evolution of new information, as well as the cognitive structure involved in learning.
Ausubel distinguishes three types of meaningful learning: representational, conceptual, and propositional.
Representational Learning
It is the most basic learning, upon which other types of learning depend. It consists of assigning meanings to certain symbols. Ausubel states:
Occurs when arbitrary symbols equate in significance to their referents (objects, events, concepts) and means for the student any meaning to allude to their referents (Ausubel, 1983:46).
This type of learning usually occurs in children. For example, learning the word “ball” occurs when the meaning of that word comes to represent, or becomes equivalent to, the ball that the child is receiving at the time. Therefore, it means the same thing for him. It is not a simple association between symbol and object, but the child relates a relatively substantial and not arbitrary, representational equivalence with relevant content within its cognitive structure.
Concept Learning
Concepts are defined as “objects, events, situations, or properties that possess common attributes and criteria that are designated by a symbol or signs” (Ausubel 1983:61). Based on this, we can say that in some ways it is also representational learning.
Concepts are acquired through two processes: formation and assimilation. In the formation of concepts, criterion attributes (characteristics) of the concept are acquired through direct experience, in successive stages of formulating and testing hypotheses. In the above example, we can say that the child acquires the generic meaning of the word “ball,” that symbol also serves as a cultural signifier for the concept “ball.” In this case, it establishes an equivalence between the symbol and its attributes of common criteria. Hence, children learn the concept “ball” through various encounters with their ball and the balls of other children.
Concept learning by assimilation occurs as the child expands his vocabulary. As the criterial attributes of concepts can be defined using the combinations available in cognitive structure, the child can distinguish different colors and sizes and claim that this is a “ball” when seeing others at any time.
Propositional Learning
This kind of learning goes beyond the simple assimilation of what words, combined or isolated, represent, as it requires grasping the meaning of the ideas expressed in the form of propositions.
Learning involves the combination of propositions and relations of several words, each one of which is a reference unit. Then these are combined so that the resulting idea is more than the sum of the meanings of the individual component words, producing a new meaning that is assimilated into the cognitive structure. This means that a potentially significant proposition, expressed verbally, as a statement that has denotative meaning (evoked at the sound characteristics of concepts) and connotative meaning (emotional burden, caused by attitudinal and idiosyncratic concepts) of the concepts involved, interacts with established relevant ideas in cognitive structure, and from this interaction, the meanings emerge from the new proposal.