Conociendo a Vigotsky, Piaget, Ausubel y Novak. | CECC

This time we are going to meet four exponents of the approach called constructivism. This approach is the one that has been developing with the contribution of the new theories of learning. The first one that we are interested in introducing is Vygotsky. Vygotsky was born in Russia and died in 1934. The contribution of Mr. Vygotsky is fundamental because he adds the conditioning of society and culture to the genetic elements.

In other words, what does Mr. Vygotsky say? Mr. Vygotsky tells us that learning processes are conditioned by the culture in which we are born and developed and by the society in which we are. It is not the same a process of access to knowledge of a Latin American than of a Japanese, for reasons of the culture of the society in which they develop.

Next, we will learn a little more about the essential points of the model that Mr. Vygotsky points out. According to Vygotsky, culture plays an important role in the development of intelligence. The characteristics of culture directly influence people. Imagine a boy from the West and one from the East. Each one will have different ways of learning and developing their superior mental functions.

Social contributions have a direct relationship with cognitive growth, since many of the discoveries of children are given through others.

The tutor, parents and friends model their behavior by giving instructions, and the child tries to assimilate and imitate them. In this way, language is fundamental for cognitive development. It allows expressing ideas and asking questions, knowing categories and concepts for thinking, and the links between the past and the future. Bigotsky, in turn, highlights the importance of guided learning.

and puts as an example cultures in which children learn to weave or weave, participating actively in important activities alongside more skilled companions, who help them and stimulate them.

As we have seen, Vygotsky highlights the importance of social and cultural processes in people's learning processes. He emphasizes in his books and in his theoretical contribution that when people learn, they internalize the processes that are taking place in the social group to which they belong and in the cultural manifestations that are their own. Another important theoretical in constructivism is Piaget, which we are going to learn about later.

Some of the most important contributions of the Swiss Jean Piaget are: the current of genetic epistemology and his studies in the field of evolutionary psychology, childhood and his theory of cognitive development.

Piaget's genetic epistemology studies the origin and development of cognitive capacities from their organic, biological and genetic origin, which made him discover that each individual develops at his own pace.

Piaget points out that learning is a reorganization of cognitive structures and is also the consequence of adaptive processes in the medium, the assimilation of knowledge and the accommodation of these in structures.

He also affirms that the motivation of the student to learn in the classroom is inherent to him and, therefore, is not directly manipulated by the teacher. Teaching should allow the student to manipulate the objects of his environment, transforming them, finding sense in them and varying them in their various aspects, experimenting until he can make logical inferences and develop new mental schemes and structures.

For Piaget, learning is given as there is a transformation in the cognitive structures of the people who learn. Basically, he is offering us two concepts: the assimilation and the accommodation. In the assimilation, what he tells us is that people assimilate what they are learning, what they are observing, what they are living.

but that knowledge they are acquiring is seen in the light of the previous knowledge they have in their cognitive structures. This allows them to somehow recreate and understand what they are accessing as new knowledge. This allows three exercises: one is to maintain the cognitive structure created because the knowledge you are receiving already has it,

modify the cognitive structure it has because the new knowledge expands what it already knew, or modify it completely because it discovers that what it knew is not necessarily the correct thing or what it wants or needs to know.

How can the educator realize that the person accommodated the new knowledge to their cognitive structures and according to the previous knowledge they have, as long as the person can explain what they have just learned? The person who cannot explain what they have learned is somehow telling us that they did not understand.

Now we are going to meet David Ausubel who provides us with a very important concept in this process of developing the new learning theories. David Paul Ausubel was an American psychologist and researcher. He based his theories on the studies of Jean Piaget. One of his most important contributions was the development of the theory of significant learning and the anticipated organizers.

These theories help the student build their own knowledge schemes to better understand the concepts. The new knowledge is substantially incorporated into the student's cognitive structure. This is achieved when the student relates the new knowledge to the ones he had before.

Para que el alumno o alumna logre un aprendizaje significativo, se necesitan significatividad lógica del material, es decir, organizado en una secuencia lógica de conceptos, significatividad psicológica del material, el alumno o alumna debe poder conectar el nuevo conocimiento con los previos y así acomodarlo en sus estructuras cognitivas, actitud favorable del alumno, ya que el aprendizaje no puede darse si no hay interés.

The contribution of Azubel is the concept of significant learning. Unfortunately, some people think that significant learning is when I am giving the student something that is important, that is significant,

But basically, the contribution that Azubel makes is that significant learning is when the new knowledge acquires meaning in light of the previous concepts that the student already has. Here we have to be very careful not to confuse what is important in the learning-teaching processes for us adults, for us educators, and the process that really occurs in the student's cognitive structures.

which is to understand what you are learning in light of the previous knowledge you have. That is significant learning.

One of the people who makes a very interesting contribution to this concept of significant learning is Novak, who manages to develop a didactic instrument that allows us to somehow detect if the student really has assumed in their cognitive structures the new learning through the creation of conceptual maps.

To be able to make a conceptual map, I must have understood the concept because then I can demonstrate that I can manipulate it with meaning. Learning is not just about assimilating knowledge. It involves its revision, modification and enrichment through new connections and relationships between them.

Working on the Ausubel theory, Novak developed a powerful instructional tool called Concept Mapping. These seek to determine or express a significant learning.

The theoretical contribution of NOVAC, its theory of education and the instructional techniques derived from it, such as conceptual maps, are a framework of conceptual and methodological reference of great validity. It is very useful to guide teaching practice and improve the quality of teaching.

These four theories that we have analyzed show us that there are important changes in the way people learn, therefore, it leads us to the fact that we have to make important changes in the way we teach.

It is not only important to understand how those who learn learn, but also how we, those who educate, learn. One of the reflections we should make is how do I learn? In what social context am I learning? What are the cultural conditions that have conditioned the way I learn? Once I have understood how I learn, I can then understand how my students learn and provide better knowledge so that it is accessed by them.