1. David Ausubel’s theory of
subsumption
(tenate)
David Ausubel was a cognitive learning theorist who focused on the learning of school
subjects and who placed considerable interest on what the student already knows as being
the primary determiner of whether and what he/she learns next.
Ausubel viewed learning as an active process, not simply responding to your environment.
Learners seek to make sense of their surroundings by integrating new knowledge with that
which they have already learned. During meaningful learning, the person “subsumes,” or
organizes or incorporates, new knowledge into old knowledge. Subsumption theory suggests
that our mind has a way to subsume information in a hierarchical or categorical manner if
the new information is linked/incorporated with prior knowledge/familiar patterns. As a
result prior knowledge is given absolute importance.

2. • Teachers are encouraged to teach prior knowledge first
rather than new information to help information subsume.
Advance organizers provide concepts and principles to the
students directly in an organized format. The strategy of
“advance organizers” basically means to classify/
categorize/ arrange (organize) information as you proceed
(advance) to the next complex level. One can assume that
the role of the teacher and instructional designer is to
consider these variables by investigating and providing the
appropriate subsumers to facilitate meaningful verbal
learning. Learning occurs in a subsumption process
whereby the learner progresses through three stages: (1)
preliminary operations, (2) obliterative stage, and (3)
learning stage.

3. • He
• defines learning as “… a change in the availability or
• future reproducibility of the learn
• ing material” (
• Ausubel, 1962, p. 218) and assumes thatcognitive
structure (i.e., knowledge
• ) is “hierarchically organized in terms of highly inclusive
• concepts under which are subsumed less inclusive sub
• concepts and informational data”