—Jerome Bruner: a
learning theorist
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—Who is Jerome Bruner?
—Learning theorist
—Associated with the
Constructivism view of learning
—
—Originated Discovery
method of learning.
—Who is Jerome Bruner?
—1915: Born in NYC
—In WW2 worked for
U.S. Army intelligence reviewing the effectiveness of propaganda.
—1947 : Ph. D. ,
Psychology from Harvard
—Positions on
faculties of Harvard, Oxford, and currently NYU
—Founded Center for
Cognitive studies with Leo Postman
—
—Who is Jerome Bruner?
—rooted mainly in the
study of cognition
—Reacted against
behaviorist model of learning
— founded “New Look”
movement in psychology
—Change from
behaviorist model
—What ideas and
influences are associated with Bruner?
1. Constructivism
—paradigm of learning
—learners create their
own subjective constructs of reality
—What ideas and
influences are associated with Bruner?
—Other Constructivists
include Piaget, Vygotsky and Dewey.
—Builds on the concept
of stages of development (Piaget)
—Environment has
bigger role in learning development.
—"any subject can
be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any
stage of development.“ The Process of Education (1960)
—What is
Discovery learning?
—
—Learner builds on
past experience
—Students interact
with environment
—Discovers facts and
relationships on own
—Students create own
construct of knowledge through narrative
—
—Advantages of Discovery
Learning
—active engagement
—promotes motivation
—Promotes ownership of
learning
—the development of
creativity and problem solving skills.
—a tailored learning
experience
—Criticisms of discovery
learning
—Too much information
(cognitive overload)
—Often requires vast
resources unavailable in traditional classroom.
—Lack of teacher
control
—Potential
misconceptions
—Teachers may fail to
recognize misconceptions
—Examples of discovery
learning
—learning with and
through narratives
—case-based learning
—guided discovery
—problem-based
learning
—simulation-based
learning
—incidental learning
—
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— Importance of
Narrative
—
—What are the roles of
narratives in the following narrative?
—How is this an
example of discovery learning?
—
—Repairing Photocopiers
—
—When I arrived at
Xerox, back in the 1980s, the company was spending millions and millions of
dollars a year training its 23,000 "tech reps" around the world-the
people who repair its copiers and printers. Lots of that training-it was like
classroom instruction seemed to have little effect. Xerox wanted me to come up
with some intelligent-tutoring or artificial-intelligence system for teaching
these people troubleshooting. Fortunately, before we did so, we hired several
anthropologists to go live in their "tribe" and see how they actually
worked.
—What the
anthropologists learned surprised us. When a tech rep got stuck by a machine,
he or she didn't look at the manual or review the training; he or she called
another tech rep. As the two of them stood over the problematic machine, they'd
recall earlier machines and fixes, then connect those stories to a new one that
explained some of the symptoms. Some fragment of the initial story would remind
them of another incident, which suggested a new measurement or tweak, which
reminded them of another story fragment and fix to try, and so on.
Troubleshooting for these people, then, really meant construction of a
narrative, one that finally explained the symptoms and test data and got the
machine up and running again. Abstract, logical reasoning wasn't the way they
went about it; stories were.
—This article was
originally published in Change,
Growing Up Digital, March/April 2000, pp 10-20. It is reprinted with the
author's permission and permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational
Foundation. It was published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC
20036-1802. Copyright © 2000.
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—Websites consulted
—Kearsley, G (2008).
Constructivist theory. Retrieved February 14, 2008, from Explorations in
Learning and Instruction Web site: http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html Jerome
Seymour Bruner. (2006).
—In Encyclopedia
of World Biography
[Web]. Thompson Gale. Retrieved 2/18/2008, from
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/jerome-seymour-bruner/
—Learning Theories
Knowledgebase (2008, February). Discovery Learning (Bruner) at
Learning-Theories.com. Retrieved February 18, 2008 from
—Bruner, , Jerome S.
(2001). In Gale encyclopedia of Psychology [Web]. Retrieved
2/18/2008, from
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0000/ai_2699000048
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