Jerome Bruner

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Jerome Bruner

• Stephanie Hortsman
• Sarah Teggelaar
• Lisa Schramm
• Patty Estrada

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Who was Jerome Bruner?

• Born in NYC 1915
• Duke University
• Harvard (Ph.D. in 1947)
• Social psychologist
• Professor of psychology at Harvard
• Work on ways in which needs, motivations, and
  expectations influence perception
• 1950s- took and interest in U.S. schools
• The Process of Education in 1960
• 1963- Distinguished Scientific Award from the
  American Psychological Association
• 1965- served as president of the association

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MACOS Project(Man A Course of Study)

• What is uniquely human about human beings?
• How did they get that way?
• How could they be made more so?

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Contrasting Constructivist and Objectivist
Theories

• Constructivist
• Learning is constructed knowledge.
• Students participate generate knowledge.
• Humans construct knowledge by participation.
• Directed instruction is too rigid
  teacher-centered.

• Objectivist
• Learning is transmitted knowledge.
• Teaching is teacher-directed, systematic, and
  structured.
• Knowledge is outside of the human mind. Learning
  occurs when people absorb store it.
• Constructivism lacks structure.

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Principles of Constructionism

• Instruction must be concerned with the
  experiences and contexts that make the student
  willing and able to learn.
• Readiness
• Instruction must be structured so that it can be
  easily grasped by the student.
• Spiral Organization
• Instruction should be designed to facilitate
  extrapolation and/ or fill in the gaps.
• Going beyond given info.

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Readiness

• Any child can learn the subject matter if it is
  converted into a form ( stage) appropriate to
  that child
• Cant teach Could teach
• astrophysics gravity
• to a two-year-old

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SpiralOrganization

• Repetition could be key
• Keep going in a circle
• Different cultures
• different ways
• Different reasoning
• Different inference

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Discovery Learning

• Enactive Stage
• Iconic Stage
• Symbolic Stage
• Not Age-Dependent or Invariant

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Enactive Stage

• Knowledge motor response
• You are doing something
• Kinesthetic
• Psychomotor
• Not limited to children
• Difficult to put in words/pictures

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Iconic Stage

• Knowledge visual pictures
• You see something
• Diagram
• Chart
• Graph
• POWER POINT !!!

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Symbolic Stage

• Knowledge words or symbols
• Not icons
• Symbols are random
• Not necessarily or always logical

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Categorization

• Perception
• Conceptualization
• Learning
• Decision making
• Making inferences
• all involved categorization

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Categories are "rules" that specify

• Criterial attributes - required characteristics
  for inclusion of an object in a category
• The second rule prescribes how the criteral
  attributes are combined.
• The third rule assignees weight to various
  properties.
• The fourth rule sets acceptance limits on
  attributes. Some attributes can vary widely.
  Others are fixed.

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Kinds of Categories

• Identity categories - categories include objects
  based on their attributes or features.
• Equivalent categories provide rules for combining
  categories.
• Equivalence can be determined by affective
  criteria, which render objects equivalent by
  emotional reactions, functional criteria, based
  on related functions or by formal criteria.
• Coding systems are categories serve to recognize
  sensory input.
• They are major organizational variables in higher
  cognitive functioning. Going beyond immediate
  sensory data involves making inferences on the
  basis of related categories. Related categories
  form a "coding system." These are hierarchical
  arrangements of related categories.

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Identity Categories

• Sample Category Cars
• Criteria 4 wheels
• transportation
• engine

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Equivalent Categories

• Criteria 4 wheels
• transportation
• engine

• Criteria 4 wheels
• transportation
• engine

Category Car
Category Truck
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Coding Systems
Criteria 4 wheels, transportation, engine
Categories Car Truck (etc.)
Coding System Motor Vehicles
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Finally, Bruner concluded

• Application
• four characteristics of
• effective instruction
• Personalized willingness to learn ?
• Content Structure structured so it is easily
  grasped by the learner
• Sequencing what order?
• Reinforcement rewards and punishment