APPLICATION OF

COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORIES

by ccs
 Theories of learning

LEARNING
CONCEPT

HUMANIST COGNITIVIST BEHAVIORIST

SOCIALIST
 LEARNING CONCEPT
 BEHAVIORIST
- Pavlov, Thorndike, Skinner
- Stimuli and reaction
 COGNITIVIST
- Kohler, Bruner, Gagne,Ausubel
- Learning is a process inside human mind
- Gestalt theory (meaningful learning, problem solving,observation, learning category,
reseption)
 SOCIALIST
- Bandura
- Neobehaviorist (behavior+cognitive), learning model, learning by observation and copy
 HUMANIST
- Carl Rogers
- Learning are effected by emotion and feeling
- Every individual has potential to get success
- Teacher guide them to follow the right path
 Cognitive theories of learning
 Cognitive theories first appeared last century, but were
usurped by behavioural theories earlier this century, only to re-
emerge as the dominant force again.
 They are concerned with the things that happen inside our
heads as we learn.
 They take the perspective that students actively process
information and learning takes place through the efforts of the
student as they organise, store and then find relationships
between information, linking new to old knowledge, schema
and scripts.
 Cognitive approaches emphasise how information is
processed.
 Similarities of three cognitive
theorists
 These three cognitive theorists, Jerome Bruner, David Ausubel
and Robert Gagné have not adopted a developmental
perspective
 different theoretical positions, they share the following
features in common.
 they all put forward their ideas initially in the 1960s. At that
time all three were established in their careers and recognised
as authorities in their own right.
 all three attempted to define cognitive theories of instruction.
The advent of these theories coincided with a period in which
Western educators were, for the first time since the 1920s,
seriously pausing to consider their educational policies; the
depression and the second World War had made such
evaluations impossible for almost thirty years.
 Of equal importance was the fact that this
period of questioning in the 1960s coincided
with periods of tremendous growth in
scientific knowledge and expansion of, what
was now in these Western countries, universal
secondary education
 DAVID AUSUBEL’S
VERBAL LEARNING
MODEL
 Ausubel’s Theory
 David Ausubel is a psychologist who advanced a theory which contrasted
meaningful learning from rote learning.
 Ausubel’s theory is involved with how individuals learn large amounts of
“meaningful” material from verbal/textual lessons in school, as opposed to
theories of learning developed in laboratories.
 Ausubel’s subsumption theory contends that “the most important single
factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows” (Ausubel,
1968).
 According to Ausubel, a primary process in learning is subsumption in
which new material is related to relevant ideas in the existing cognitive
structures.
 Ausubel proposes an instructional mode using advance organizers. He
emphasizes that advance organizers are different from overviews and
summaries which simply emphasize key ideas and details in an arbitrary
manner. Organizers act as a “subsuming bridge” (Ausubel, 1963) between
new learning material and existing related ideas.
 Meaningful Learning Contrasted with
Rote Learning
 Rote Learning
 Arbitrary, verbatim, non-substantive incorporation of new
knowledge into cognitive structure.
 No effort to integrate new knowledge with existing
concepts in cognitive structure.
 Learning not related to experience with events or objects.
 No affective commitment to relate new knowledge to prior
learning.
 Meaningful Learning
 Non-arbitrary, non-verbatim, substantive incorporation of
new knowledge into cognitive structure.
 Deliberate effort to link new knowledge with higher order
concepts in cognitive structure
 Learning related to experiences with events or objects.
 Affective commitment to relate new knowledge to prior
learning.
Ausubel's Model of Learning
Phase One: Phase Two: Phase three:
Advance Presentation of Strengthening
Organizer Learning Task or Cognitive
Material Organization
   Make the  
Clarify aim of organization of the Relate new
the lesson new material information to
explicit. advance
organizer
Present the Make logical order
organizer of learning material Promote active
explicit. reception
learning.
Relate organizer Present material
to students' and engage students
knowledge in meaningful
learning activities.
Novak’s Concept Mapping Technique

 The concept mapping technique was developed by

Joseph D. Novak at Cornell University.
 Novak concluded that "Meaningful learning involves
the assimilation of new concepts and propositions
into existing cognitive structures".
 Novak’s work was based on the theories of Ausubel.
 Novak and Gowan (1984) have developed a theory of
instruction that is based on Ausubel's meaningful
learning principles that incorporates "concept maps"
to represent meaningful relationships between
concepts and propositions.
 A cognitive map is a “kind of visual road map
showing some of the pathways we may take to
connect meanings of concepts.”
 According to Novak and Gowan, concept maps
should be hierarchical.
 The more general, more inclusive concepts should be
at the top of the map, and the more specific, less
inclusive concepts at the bottom of the map.
 What is concept mapping?
 Concept mapping is a technique for
representing knowledge in graphs.
 Knowledge graphs are networks of concepts.
 Networks consist of nodes and links.
 Nodes represent concepts and links represent
the relations between concepts.
 Concepts and links are labeled.
 Links can be non-, uni- or bi-directional.
 Concepts and links may be categorized. They
can be
 simply associative,
 Specified, or
 divided in categories such as causal or temporal
relations.
 Purposes of Concept Mapping
 to generate ideas (brain storming, etc.)
 to design a complex structure (long texts,
hypermedia, large web sites, etc.)
 to communicate complex ideas
 to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old
knowledge
 to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding
Concept mapping as a student learning
tool
 To learn course material
 Students can use concept maps to take class notes.
 Students can use concept maps to organize class notes or course
material.
 To integrate course content
 Students can use concept maps to connect material learned throughout
the semester.
 To integrate material across different courses
 Often students fail to see the relationship between different classes that
they have taken.
 Concept mapping can foster a student's understanding of how different
courses relate if they map the prominent concepts from different
courses that they have taken (e.g. compose one map of terms from a
statistics class and a research design class).
 To assess their own learning. Concept maps can be
used to assess changes and growth in the students'
conceptual understanding as a result of instruction
received in the course.
 Learning can be evaluated before a course begins (to
evaluate students' prior knowledge), during the semester (to
evaluate changes in the students' knowledge), and/or at the
end of the semester (to evaluate the students' knowledge
after all course material has been covered).
 Concept maps can be used to evaluate changes in learning
over time and to evaluate end of course knowledge.
 A concept map can provide feedback to the student so
that s/he can check her/his understanding of the
material to see if any connections are missing.
 1. Identify the important terms or concepts that
you want to include on your map

 There are three strategies to identify important

concepts to include concepts on a concept map:
 An instructor generated list and students are not permitted
to add their own concepts
 An instructor generated list but the students are allowed to
add their own concepts to the list
 An entirely student-generated list of concepts on a
particular subject
 For novice concept mappers, it is probably best to
have the terms provided.
2. Arrange concepts in a pattern that best represents the
information

 One can choose to use a hierarchical or non-

hierarchical structure.
 The use of hierarchical or non-hierarchical maps may
have different benefits in terms of pedagogy and
assessment.
 Novice mappers may want to create their concept
maps using post-it notes so that they can easily
change the location of any concept before a final
version is constructed.
 3. Use circles or ovals to enclose an important
term or concept within the topic
 Each circle or oval should enclose only one term or
concept. However, terms can be more than one word.
 4. Use straight lines with arrows (single or
double-headed) to link terms that are related
 Each line should link only two concepts.
 However, there is no limit to the number of links
stemming from any one term.
 Pay close attention to the direction of the arrowheads
on the linking lines when labeling them.
 Each concept is defined by its relation to other
concepts within the topic. Relations include: superset,
subset, attribute, part-whole.
 5. Use a word or phrase of words as labels along the
lines to designate the relationship between two
connected terms
 Each line should have a label that describes the
relationship between the two terms it connects.
 Example:
relationship
Important link
term

relationship
link Important
term
feedback
loop link
Important mutual
term relationship
Important
link
mutual term
relationship
link
Examples of concept maps