that an understanding of concepts, principles, and ideas is achieved through deductive reasoning. Similarly, he believed in the idea of meaningful learning as opposed to rote memorization. In the preface to his book Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View, he says that "If [he] had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, [he] would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly" (Ausubel, 1968, p. vi) Through his belief of meaningful learning, Ausubel developed his theory of advance organizers. However, Ausubel was a critic of discovery-based teaching techniques, stating: Actual examination of the research literature allegedly supportive of learning by discovery reveals that valid evidence of this nature is virtually nonexistent. It appears that the various enthusiasts of the discovery method have been supporting each other research-wise by taking in each other's laundry, so to speak, that is, by citing each other's opinions and assertions as evidence and by generalizing wildly from equivocal and even negative findings. Advance organizers An advance organizer is information presented by an instructor that helps the student organize new incoming information. This is achieved by directing attention to what is important in the coming material, highlighting relationships, and providing a reminder about relevant prior knowledge. Advance organizers make it easier to learn new material of a complex or otherwise difficult nature, provided the following two conditions are met: 1. The student must process and understand the information presented in the organizer—this increases the effectiveness of the organizer itself. 2. The organizer must indicate the relations among the basic concepts and terms that will be used. Types Ausubel distinguishes between two kinds of advance organizer: comparative and expository. 1. Comparative Organizers The main goal of comparative organizers is to activate existing schemas. Similarly, they act as reminders to bring into the working memory of what one may not realize is relevant. By acting as reminders, the organizer points out explicitly "whether already established anchoring ideas are nonspecifically or specifically relevant to the learning material" (Ausubel & Robinson, 1969, p. 146). Similarly, a comparative organizer is used both to integrate as well as discriminate. It "integrate[s] new ideas with basically similar concepts in cognitive structure, as well as increase[s] discriminability between new and existing ideas which are essentially different but confusably similar" (Ausubel, 1968, p. 149). An example of a comparative organizer