Do you know what you need to do to create a memory trail in your brain?Have you ever stopped to think about the mechanisms involved in learning?Do you think just by looking at how to make a cake, how to ride a bike?or how to recite a poem, could you reproduce what you saw?In this article, we’ll talk about meaningful learning.
A good memory implies a certain repetition of what we see or hear, this is because we really only learn when, after observing how a certain thing is done, we put into practice all our resources to do it autonomously.
- Schools should therefore harness the potential of active methodologies.
- With which students can act as true protagonists rather than simply play the role of data receivers.
Children need to appropriate what they learn, maintain the flame of creativity and the will to explore, rather than let them gradually fade over the years. We want your curiosity about what you have learned (and what you can still learn) so that you have no limits and devote more time and interest to this process.
However, adult life should not take away that curiosity and desire to learn, enrich and expand your knowledge more and more. Because we only really learn when we get involved and when the information we receive attracts us; that is, when our mind records everything we’re interested in.
“Tell me and I’ll forget it, show me and I’ll remember it, get involved and I’ll learn. ” Benjamin Franklin-
David Paul Ausubel was an American psychologist and educator who belonged to the constructivist movement and focused on the development and organization of teaching based on student knowledge.
Among his theories is that of meaningful learning, a perspective that takes into account that true knowledge can only be born when new information makes sense against existing knowledge.
This means that for Ausubel, learning is only possible when new learnings connect with existing ones, not so much because of similarity, but also because, from this interaction, it is possible to build a new and more rewarding meaning.
Thus, Ausubel’s theory of meaningful learning includes each of the elements and conditions that guarantee the acquisition, assimilation and retention of content that children receive in school, and which are determining factors in the acquisition of meaning.
Therefore, to achieve the sense of learning, we need two conditions
The first point comes from motivation, the interest of being attracted and enthusiastic. We need to have the urge to learn and remember, so that what we capture is not just more information, but something we want to adopt.
The second condition refers to anchors, structures that allow us to have a basis to support and link later knowledge and thus create a memory track.
In addition, in his theory, Ausubel divides knowledge into three types:
Ausubel’s perspective leads us to reflect on the learning of memory and its short life, since memory is lost when it is no longer repeated in time, in this way meaningful learning seems to have a more solid character because it is not learned by repetition, but by the relationship between concepts and knowledge, which facilitates its memorization.
So, meaningful learning occurs when we are truly prepared, both in terms of motivation and mentality, to acquire new learnings is it because we only really learn when something catches our attention ?, when our features are enabled and push us to acquire and integrate something. New.
Good teachers are characterized by nurturing this desire, getting excited and attracting our curiosity in a thousand different ways.