Meaningful To Accept The Application Of Learning Theory In The History Teaching In Secondary Schools

Ausubel is a famous contemporary American psychologist, whose creative research on teaching and learning theories provides a systematical and comprehensive psychological basis for both theory and application in school education. He puts emphasis on meaningful reception learning. He also believes that real practice is not necessarily required for students' active learning, neither is conclusion drawn from the real practice; and that receiving given knowledge is not necessarily equal to passive or meaningless learning. History suggests that students acquire knowledge mainly by information given by teachers and informative works rather than individual practice. Consequently school education generally involves students'receiving systematical information from teachers which involves comprehensive and meaningful learning of students, as Ausunel suggests in his theory, thus is positive and active.Learning is the process of connecting the acquired knowledge with new information. As Ausunel indicates in his theory, this process involves a substantial and uncontrollable connection between new information and acquired knowledge. Teaching allows students to comprehend new information, while learning aims at. a thorough understanding of given information. However, meaningful reception learning is not simply receiving given information but rather an active action of choosing and processing it, which enables learners to acquire the essence of given information. Hence based on the acquired knowledge and experience, learning is also an irreplaceable growing process of individual approaches to knowledge and active actions of building a structural knowledge system.This thesis attempts to give a general introduction to Ausubel's meaningful reception learning, which is followed by an analysis of the application of meaningful reception learning theory in history course, with the recent merge of education revolution of history course. In addition, this thesis also briefly introduces relevant teaching strategies regarding certain conditions of meaningful reception learning theory. Toward the end of the thesis, specific cases on history teaching are evaluated as evidence of application of meaningful reception learning theory in high school history teaching.