Jerome S. Bruner
Social Cultural Development
Unit 5, Chapter 7
Jerome S. Bruner
• Born in 1915 in NYC
• Key figure of the
cognitive revolution
• Has become critical of
the cognitive revolution
• Argues for the building
of cultural psychology
• The goal of
education should be
to make the learner
“as autonomous and
self propelled a
thinker” as possible
Culture and Cognitive Growth
• What does it mean
intellectually to grow
up in one cultural
setting and not
another?
• The cultural
environment of the
learner determines
the particular use or
application of
concepts.
• Members of different
cultures, because of
the specific and unique
demands of living in
their societies, make
sense of their
experiences in
different ways.
• If the child only takes in
what he is ready to
assimilate, why bother to
teach before he is ready,
and since he takes it in
naturally when he is
ready, why bother
teaching afterwards?
• Understanding how
culture interacts with
human development
and biology to define
the human condition.
• What does this
influence of culture
mean for learning
and instruction?
2 Major Themes to His Works
• The sequence of
representational systems
children acquire through
which they understand
their worlds.
• The role of culture and
schooling to develop the
human intellect.
3 Modes of Representation
• Enactive
Representation
• Iconic
Representation
• Symbolic
Representation
Enactive Representation
• A person learns about
the world through
actions on objects.
• Represents past events
through appropriate
motor responses.
Iconic Representation
• Where learning occurs
through using models
and pictures.
• It enables the perceiver
to summarize events by
the selective
organization of
percepts and images.
Symbolic Representation
• Describes the capacity
to think in abstract terms.
• Comes about with the
acquisition of a symbol
system which represents
things by design features
that include remoteness
and arbitrariness.
• If these constant stages
are true for children – are
they true for adults too?
Might they pass through
the same sequence of
enactive to symbolic
representation when they
learn a subject for which
they have no prior
experience?
• When the learner has a
well-developed
symbolic system, it may
be possible to by-pass
the first two stages.
Contradicting Ideas
• Piaget – developmental
stages proceed in a fixed
sequence at certain
approximate ages and
developing certain logical
operations.
• Bruner – constant
sequence of stages, but
not dependent on age.
• Piaget – cognitive
readiness of the learner
to acquire information
• Bruner – has the subject
matter been structured
to meet the cognitive
structure of the learner.
Learner Readiness
• The challenge is to
provide problem’s in
instruction that both fit
the manner of
children’s thinking and
tempt them into more
powerful modes.
Choosing the Right Mode
• Know about the learner’s
prior knowledge.
• Know the learner’s
dominant mode of
thinking.
• Is the instructional goal
speed of learning or
transfer or learning?
Transitioning to the Next Stage
• Interaction between
ability and experience.
• Interpersonal interaction.
• Learning is a social
enterprise.
• Interaction between
individual and culture.
Learning by Discovery
• The process contributes to
intellectual development
and can only be learned
through problem solving.
• Discovery teaching generally
involves not so much the
process of leading students
to discover what is “out
there”, but rather, their
discovering what is in their
own heads.
Development
• Outside in
• Inside out
Successful Discovery Learning
Must have…
• Sufficient prior
knowledge
• Guided practice in
inquiry
• Reflection
• Contrast
• By understanding how
skills are influenced by
culture, however
teachers will be in a
better position to
capitalize on the
performances students
do exhibit.
• “To instruct someone in
the disciplines is not a
matter of getting him to
commit results to mind.
Rather, it is to teach him
to participate in the
process that makes
possible the
establishment of
knowledge.”