Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who made signification contributions to educational, cognitive and developmental psychology. This paper will focus on who Bruner is, his main theories explained, plus a comparison between Bruner and Piaget and the effectiveness of Bruners theories in the classroom.
Bruner was born and raised in New York City, Bruner graduated high school in 1933 and went on to major in psychology at Duke University; earning an AB degree in 1937. Subsequently, Bruner pursued a graduate study at Harvard University receiving the MA in 1939 and a Ph.D. in 1941.
Gardner (2001) noted;
“Jerome Bruner has served a vital role in the educational discourse of our time: bringing to bear the latest thinking in psychology on the contemporary problems of the society.” (page 94).
In 1960, Bruner published 'The Process of Education'; a landmark text which had a direct impact on policy arrangement in the US, influencing thinking and orientation of a wide group of teachers and students. The main objectives of this process is to present subject matter effectively, not only for coverage but the structure too. Bruner (1960) focusses on 4 key themes which emerged around the process. The first theme is the importance of the structure; a practical approach focusing on two different ways of learning. The first way of learning describes specific relevance to tasks that are highly similar to those who we originally learned to preform and the second is earlier learning renders later performance more efficiently through the transfer of principles and attitudes. The second theme is the readiness for learning. This theme suggests that schools have wasted a great deal of time postponing the teaching of important areas ...
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...idge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
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Every year, education majors across the U.S. face a barrage of learning theories and models in their education courses. Professors waste no time in introducing them to Pavlov and his dogs, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Maslow’s Hierarchy, Piaget, Skinner, Gagne, Bruner and more (Marsh, McFadden, and Price, n.d.). From the work of these great men come such learning theories as behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, three paradigms that have shaped our current educational system. The next generation of teachers creates countless practice lesson plans based around these theories. Unfortunately, there is a wide divide between the psychology of how humans learn and the constraints of an American classroom. The SUCCEED instructional design model attempts to marry prominent learning theory with the realities of the classroom to create a model that is both fundamentally sound and realistic.
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Lev Vygotsky developed his theory of learning in the 1920’s but it was not until the late 1960’s that his ideas about learning became popular and were used to contribute to “Constructivism” as a method of teaching. (Krause [et al.] 2010 p. p81).
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When it comes to education many individuals have different views on how children should learn things. A psychologist by the name of Jerome Bruner had his own theory when it came to education. Bruner is a very smart man himself, who went to school to study and to learn about many different types of psychology to understand humans completely to the best of his knowledge. He strived to learn about cognitive growth and learning so he could help children in the future. This is what helped him develop his theory into what it is today.
Ormrod, J. E. (2012). Essentials of educational psychology: Big ideas to guide effective teaching, 3rd, ed. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
His early work focused on the impact of needs, motivations, expectations, and their influences on perception. Bruner believed that children are active problem solvers and that they are very capable of exploring subjects that may be difficult for them. He had four key themes in his early work. First of all, he stressed the importance of the role of structure in learning and how it may be a central part in teaching. Next, Bruner introduced the ideas of readiness for learning and spiral curriculum. He believed that any subject could be taught to children at any stage of development as long as it fits the child’s cognitive ability. On the other hand, spiral curriculum is about revisiting basic ideas over and over, building on the ideas, and elaborating on the ideas until there is the full understanding of the ideas. Third, Bruner believed intuitive and analytical thinking should be encouraged and rewarded. He thought that intuitive skills were not stressed enough. Finally, the last theme is he investigated in motivation of learning. He believed that the best way to stimulate learning is interest in the subject matter. He did not like grades or class ranking at all because he believed that they were
Olson, M. H. & Hergenhahn, B. R. (2013). An introduction to theories of learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
One hundred years ago, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a young man developing new insights about learning. He was one of a handful of constructivist-minded writers and educational theorists of the time. Learning theories open educators up to new ideas. They are necessary to expand our knowledge of how learning works. Piaget’s work is a well-tested and educators around the world should be aware of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive development in particular because it will improve the quality of their teaching. Once a teacher knows this theory, they can plan lessons appropriate to their students’ cognitive ability and build upon students’ earlier knowledge in a constructivist way.
Duchesne, S., McMaugh, A. Bochner, S, and Krause, K. (2013) Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching. 4th Edition. South Melbourne: Cengage Learning.