Jerome Bruner

Jerome  Bruner 

Personal Background

Jerome Seymour Bruner is a Psychologist who contributed significantly to the fields of Cognitive, Developmental and Educational Psychology. He was born blind in 1915 in New York City, New York, USA. However, he attained his eye sight after two successful surgeries as an infant. He had his first education in a public school and graduated from high school in 1933. He majored in Psychology and got his BA Degree in 1937. He then studied in Harvard University which is one of the world’s most prestigious universities where he received his PhD in 1941 ( Answers, 2013).

Career History

He worked in Psychological Warfare Division during the Second World War. After this, Bruner did his research as a member of the Faculty in Harvard University since 1945 and left the faculty in 1970 to teach at the University of Oxford.  While he was in Harvard University, he opened the Center of Cognitive studies in Harvard University. He is currently a senior research fellow in Law and teaches students as a professor at New York University since 1991 and still continues his research in Developmental Psychology. His major contributions to the field involve the books “The Process of Education” which was widely accepted and thus translated into nineteen languages and “A Study of Thinking” which was one of the initiators of the cognitive sciences (DiPrima, M.B & Hickson, M., 2006)

Theory

Jerome Bruner’s contributions to the theory and development of the field of psychology:

Cognitive Psychology

Bruner is known as one of the initiators of the cognitive psychology movement in the US. He first started to study about perception as an active process rather than a passive process;  i.e, the results of his experiments on perception showed that perception is not only how an organism responds to a stimulus but there is also an internal interpretation  of the stimulus by that organism. The book “A study of thinking” published in 1956 is considered the initiator of the study of Cognitive Psychology. 

Bruner came up with three stages of instruction based on cognitive development. These are:

1. Enactive: This stage includes learning about the world through actions with physical objects and the result of these actions. This mode is dominant from birth to age 3. 

2. Iconic: In this stage learning takes place using pictures and models. This mode is dominant from age 3 to 8.

3. Symbolic: In this stage, learner's ability to think in abstract terms develops. This mode is dominant from age 8 onwards. 

All of these modes are dominant in the above three different stages of development, however, all three modes are always available and accessible. Bruner suggested using these three modes together in order to facilitate effective learning.The diagram below depicts these three modes of learning
(Mr. Mehta Y PD, 2009).

Diagram 2 Bruner's three modes of learning

 

Educational Psychology

Bruno assessed various educational systems and suggested ways to improve these systems. In his book “The Process of Education” he held the view that education should not be based on memorizing facts. Rather, more facts will be learnt by teaching them how something is made. Bruner also suggested a spiral curriculum where the curriculum does not focus on narrow topics for long periods of time, rather the curriculum attempts to expose students to different topics over and over again, every time slightly increasing the amount of information taught ( Answers, 2013).

Developmental Psychology

One of his most significant and major contributions is in Developmental Psychology. He came up with the term “Instructional Scaffolding” after studying how children learned and concluded that children often build on the information they already know. Instructional Scaffolding is the provision of appropriate guidance and support to promote learning (Seifert & Sutton, 2009). These supports are temporary and need to be removed when the child has reached the target or developed his/her own learning strategies. The following diagram depicts the theory of Scaffolding.

Diagram 2 Scaffolding

Application of theory to the classroom/teaching

Imagine you are a teacher and there is a student in your class who is below average and faces difficulties in catching up with the work given. How would you help the student to achieve the target and goals by the end of the year? Would you let him learn by himself or would you provide some sort of support? I am sure you would agree that the latter would be more beneficial to the student. The provision of this support to the student is Instructional Scaffolding.

There are various ways we could apply scaffolding in our classrooms. Some of them are:

1       Providing appropriate resources: A classroom with different levels of students will definitely need different levels of support from the teacher. A teacher could provide different resources according to their needs. For example, providing extra worksheets of different levels according to the different levels of students.

2       Providing guides and templates: For example, when helping students with reading comprehension, the teacher could provide them with guidelines and templates to use while reading the passage. Children could be taught to look for answers for What, Why, When, How and Where questions within the passage in order to better understand the content. The following video portrays a good example of this.

Video:Guided Reading with Jenna: Reading Predictions

3.   Providing expert/peer support: You could also, for example, pair an average student with an above average student or group them so that they can help each other. Also the teacher could arrange for an expert to come and provide more information and help to the student.

It is very important that the teacher removes these supports slowly according to the students’ improvement and when he/she finally reaches the targets and learns how to do it by him/herself.

 References:

Answers (2013). Jerome Bruner. Retrieved from: http://www.answers.com/topic/jerome-bruner

 

DiPrima, M.B & Hickson, M. (2006) Discover Jerome Bruner, The Father of Cognitive Revolution. Retrieved from: http://brunerwiki.wikispaces.com/ 

Guided Reading with Jenna: Reading Predictions. Video retrieved from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJHzabXTSE&list=PL34A2B2FE7334F95E

Mr. Mehta Y PD (2009). Jerome Bruner Theory. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/sanjeevmehta52/jerome-bruner-learning-theory

Seifert, K. & Sutton, R ( 2009). Educational Psychology, 2nd edition. The Saylor Foundation.