Jerome Bruner

1
Jerome Bruner

• For N515- by Leslie Wagle

2
Life

• Jerome Bruner was born in New York City and
  educated at Duke University and Harvard. His
  career has been long and productive, including
  leadership roles in several landmark projects
  that had widespread influence on education
  practices. He began studying the cognitive
  development of children in the 1940s and became
  interested in schooling in the USA in the 1950s.
  In the 1960s he suggested that intellectual
  ability developed in stages though stepped
  changes in how the mind is used. In the 1980s he
  began to believe that cultural influences affect
  learning psychology.

3
Key Concepts

• Bruner believed that detailed material is
  remembered by the use of simplified ways of
  representing it. He deplored the educational
  psychology dominant in America before 1940, which
  confused "skills" with "understanding."  Instead,
  Bruner placed "structure" at the heart of
  education  give a child a sense of the structure
  of what he is being taught and he will learn the
  information for himself.

• To instruct someone is not a matter of just
  getting things into his mind, but teaching him to
  participate in the process of gaining knowledge.

4
Effect on American Education

• Jerome Bruner is now widely regarded as one of
  the most influential twentieth century writers
  and thinkers to apply principles of psychology to
  modern education and curriculum theory. Bruner
  claimed that any subject can be taught
  effectively in some form to any child at any
  stage of development. A curriculum should revisit
  basic ideas repeatedly, building on them until
  the student has grasped the general picture in
  terms of the relationships between things
  encountered earlier and later.

5
His main theories

• Jerome Bruner was among the first
  to realize that ("thinking") depends on
  placing an event or situation in the
  appropriate category. Bruner also realized that
  categories are not "discovered" but "invented".
  They do not exist in the environment they are
  construed by the human mind. Thus what matters is
  really the classifying information into a new
  category, or which into some existing category.
• Three principles of his overall thinking are
  readiness, structure and sequence, and
  extrapolation.

6
Readiness

• Instruction must be concerned with the
  experiences and contexts that make the student
  willing and able to learn.
• So, a teacher might first excite interest by
  filling a glass with water and asking students
  how many pennies they think can be put into the
  jar without water spilling out. Their curiosity
  would be aroused when the pennies greatly exceed
  their estimates. This then leads to an
  exploration of many variables and basic
  principles they would find perplexing if offered
  only in theory.

7
Structure

• Instruction must be structured so that it can be
  easily grasped by the student.
• Bruner demonstrated that any domain of knowledge,
  or problem or concept, can be represented in some
  way (including images or graphics) simple enough
  that any particular learner can understand it in
  a recognizable form.

8
Sequence

• Instruction should lead the learner through the
  content in order to increase the students
  ability to grasp, transform, and transfer what is
  learned. In general, sequencing should move from
  hands-on concrete experiences, to iconic (visual)
  then to symbolic.

9
Extrapolation

• Instruction should be designed to facilitate
  filling in the gaps (going beyond the information
  given).
• The nature and pacing of instruction should move
  away from external rewards, such as a teachers
  praise, toward the intrinsic rewards inherent in
  solving problems or understanding concepts. The
  teacher can provide a vital link to the learner
  in helping the learner develop techniques for
  obtaining feedback on his or her own.

10
Application of the Theories

• Bruner introduced the doctrine of the spiral
  curriculum, that all topics -in some form -must
  be introduced at an early age, but cannot be
  exhausted at any age, and thus must be returned
  to in increasing depth.

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The Spiral
In order for a student to develop from simple to
more complex lessons, certain basic knowledge and
skills must first be mastered.  This provides
linkages between each lesson as student spirals
upwards in a course of a study.  As new knowledge
and skills are introduced, they reinforce what is
already learned and become related to previously
learned information.  What the student gradually
achieves is a rich breadth and depth of
information that is not normally developed when
each topic is discrete and disconnected from each
other.
12
Legacy

• A constant theme in Bruners work is that
  education is a process of discovery. Students are
  encouraged to discover facts and relationships
  for themselves and continually build on what they
  already know. This has greatly influenced
  teaching styles, such as where the teacher does
  not just talk about dinosaurs, but has the
  students construct models of dinosaurs, watch a
  film about them, and then discuss imaginary
  encounters with them, etc.
• He also was an influence on the Xerox researchers
  in their efforts to create the graphic user
  interface (GUI).

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Latest Interests
Bruner has begun to promote the insight that we
construct and we reconstruct our world, not just
with bricks and mortar, but by creating and
re-creating the meaning of different things.
This process takes place largely through social
interaction, where the role of culture is key to
shaping the concept we have of ourselves and our
powers.
14
How Bruner relates to Music

• In 1991 Bruner published an article entitled
  The narrative Construction of Reality in which
  he argued that the mind structures its sense of
  reality through symbolic systems. The narrative
  idea has been used by one music educator.
• The following material is taken from an article
  in Piano Pedagogy Forum by Ivan Frazier
• http//www.music.sc.edu/ea/
• keyboard/PPF/4.2/4.2PPFpp.html

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Frazier explains an experience where he described
a piece by Bach in narrative rather than
technical terms.
I might have described the piece this way
In three-eight meter the
subject begins with the
right hand in the tonic key followed by
its imitation by the left hand in the dominant,
as the right hand takes the countersubject over
from the left hand. Then the right hand repeats
the subject in D-sharp minor, the subdominant of
the relative minor. Continuing the process the
left hand imitates the subject etc., etc.,
etc. But, Frazier didnt think it that would
provoke much excitement or interest in the piece,
so during his lecture I said it was lively and
frolicsome due its three-eight meter and that
the left hand chases the right through a maze of
related major and minor keys.
16
Narrative thinking and language like that can
awaken curiosity and fascination, which can
generate the energy needed to find out what it
means that the left hand chases the right, and to
explore that maze of related keys to see where it
leads with all its turns and cadences along the
way. Students may then find the motivation to do
the hard work needed for objective analysis and
diligent practice.
One student assigned characters, as in a drama,
to all the themes in the final rondo of a Mozart
Sonata, and made a simple visual representation
of each character. Her "map" acted as an
operatic narrative and a useful tool for secure
memorization of the movement.
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• Ivan Frazier has had success with asking his
  piano students to relate to a problem by finding
  a narrative for it. He finds that they often
  improve their playing when he asks
• them to find a more global concept.
• One student described pedaling problems as
• It sounds like a change from 'stereo' to
  'mono
• Another one said that ritenuto is when you "hit
  traffic."
• Frazier concludes I have found myself
  increasingly alert to statements from, and
  incidents with students that show evidence of
  narrative thinking, and have started a diary to
  collect them.

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In closing.

• Jerome Bruner, whose career spans more than 60
  years, was not happy with the early use of
  computers (for drill and practice) in schools.
  Although he is happy with later efforts to
  stimulate intuitive and analytical thinking,
  Bruner still thinks technology has not explored
  the spiral curriculum concept in its full
  potential to create knowledge students can build
  on.
• http//edtech2.boisestate.edu/wagnerk/edtech580/je
  rome.htm

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References

• (picture) http//www.doyletics.com/arj/tpoerev.htm
  
• Smith, M.K. http//www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.h
  tm
• Raimi, Ralph http//www.math.rochester.edu/people/
  faculty/rarm/bruner.html
• Sherwood, Emily http//www.educationupdate.com/arc
  hives/2005/Nov/html/col-jeromebutler.html
• (4) Smith, M.K. http//www.infed.org/thinkers/brun
  er.htm
• 5. Scaruffi, Piero. http//www.thymos.com/mind/bru
  ner2.html
• 6. Smith, M.K. http//www.scied.gsued.edu/Hassard/
  mos/2.7html

• 7. Kinnes, T. http//oaks.nvg.org/wm1ra2.html
• 8. Hassard, Jack http//www.scied.gsued.edu/Hassar
  d/mos/2.7html
• 9. Hassard, Jack http//www.scied.gsued.edu/Hass
  ard/mos/2.7html
• 10. Raimi, Ralph http//www.math.rochester.edu/peo
  ple/faculty/rarm/bruner.html
• 11. Kristinsdottir, S. http//www.starfsfolk.khi.i
  s/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm
• 12. Hollyman, David http//au.geocities.com/
  vanunoo/Humannature/bruner.html
• 13. Scaruffi, Piero. http//www.thymos.com/mind/br
  uner2.html
• 14. -- http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bruner