A Comparative Analysis Of Bruner’s And Ausubel’s Views On The Learning Process And Their Implications For Zimbabwe

Abstract

Bruner’s work focuses on learning through discovery. His position is that students learn best when they themselves discover the structure of a subject by inductive meftns. Ausubel believes that learning should be primarily deductive. Students must understand the more general concepts, or subsumers, before mastering details and sub-concepts. This paper compares and critically analyses the views of Bruner and Ausubel on the learning process and their relevance to Zimbabwe. Bruner’s four principles of teaming and Ausuble’s meaningful verbal learning theory are presented and their implications for teaching with reference to Zimbabwe are discussed.