Jerome Bruner

For N515- by Leslie Wagle

 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 1940’s and became interested in schooling in
the USA in the 1950’s. In the 1960’s he suggested
that intellectual ability developed in stages though
stepped changes in how the mind is used. In the
1980’s he began to believe that cultural influences
affect learning psychology.
 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.”
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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 Sequence
• Instruction should lead the learner through the
content in order to increase the student’s 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.
 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 teacher’s 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.
 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.
 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.
 Legacy

• A constant theme in Bruner’s 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).
 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.
 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
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
its imitation
tonic by the by
key followed 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 didn’t 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.”
“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.
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.”
 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/jerome.htm
1. (picture)
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14. --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je
rome_Bruner