David Ausubel’s theory and learning improvement: a case study of the Leveling Courses Program in Basic Sciences for Engineering

Abstract

The evasion in higher education, especially in science courses, is a reality faced by universities not only in Brazil, but also in several other countries around the world. The number of students who drop out of university is very expressive, resulting in academic, economic and social losses. To try to minimize this problem, the University Extension Department of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) together with the Institute of Technology (ITEC) created in 2011 the Levelling Courses Program in Basic Sciences for Engineering (LCPBSE), whose main area of action is to teach basic mathematics, physics and chemistry for the newly enrolled students in engineering courses. These classes happen before the students have contact with the first subjects of the basic cycle, especially the discipline of Calculus 1, common to all engineering courses. Recent statistical studies have demonstrated that LCPBSE has a relevant role to reduce educational gaps in conceptual and operational fields in the basic sciences to engineering, in addition to working essential topics to the basic courses of undergraduate. Recognizing the importance of  LCPBSE as fundamental tool against evasion rate, the research is aiming to better understand its functionality and how it was able to increase the approval ratings. Thus, this paper has as objective to explain how the LCPBSE supports students and it tries to understand what epistemological learning mechanism under the factors contributing to students academic performance increasing. The methodology was based on the bibliographical research of several authors who study the cognitive learning. Among them, we studied those who had a philosophical cognitive/constructivist stance: Piaget, Vygotsky, Kelly, Ausubel and Vergnaud. As a result of this studies, we focus on David Ausubel’s work, who proposes the Meaningful Learning Theory, a thesis that may be able to explain how LCPBSE is helping students to learn more efficiently. According to Ausubel, for learning to be meaningful, it is necessary for the new information to relate to a relevant aspect already existing in the learner's cognitive structure. These relevant aspects are called subsumers, which serve as an anchor for the new knowledge to be acquired. Based on this, the LCPBSE classes may be serving as an organizer of the students' subsumers, so that they can attend the Calculus classes already with the necessary prior knowledge. Finally, we concluded that the organization of subsumers can be a critical strategy used to improve learning and to decrease the evasion rates. Such strategy can be applied not only in the LCPBSE, but also in other programs of other universities.