In Search of Pedagogy Volume1The selected works of

Jerome s. Brunner

By

Bushra Ghaus

Fatima Jinnah Women University

About Jerome S. Brunner

• Born on October 1, 1915 in NY, to Herman and Rose Bruner- emigrated from Poland.

• Received a bachelor's degree in psychology, in 1937 from Duke University. Master's degree in psychology in 1939 and then a doctorate in psychology in 1941 from Harvard University.

• one of the best known and influential psychologists of the twentieth century. He was one of the key figures in the so called ‘cognitive revolution’ – but it is the field of education that his influence has been especially felt.

• His books The Process of Education and Towards a Theory of Instruction have been widely read and become recognized as classics

• His work on the social studies programme – Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) – in the mid-1960s is a landmark in curriculum development.

• Bruner later became critical of the ‘cognitive revolution’ and looked to the building of a cultural psychology that takes proper account of the historical and social context of participants.

• In his 1996 book The Culture of Education these arguments were developed with respect to schooling (and education more generally). ‘How one conceives of education’, he wrote, ‘we have finally come to recognize, is a function of how one conceives of the culture and its aims, professed and otherwise’ (Bruner 1996: ix-x).

About the Book

• Volume I spans the twenty years from 1957 to 1978

• Consists of 16 chapters

• In his introduction to volume I, Bruner explains how he became deeply interested in education after years of studying perception as a psychologist.

• Bruner states that:

• ‘What led me to my plunge, rather, was (how shall I call it?) a recognition of the relevance of education to the desperate ideological struggles of

those times, the troubled early years of the Cold War’ (vol. I, p. 1).

• The various chapters reflect Bruner’s immense interest in human cognition

• Bruner presents his own research, as well as the research of other scholars

• insightful empirical studies; psychological and philosophical frameworks; strategies for educational practice etc

Chap 1: Going Beyond the Information

Bushra Ghaus

Charles Spearman 1923

Characterized basic cognitive processes. Emerged with triad of non-genetic principles.

Organisms are capable of comprehending the world the live in.

Education of relations

Education of correlates

Going beyond information

Instances:1. Categorization

2. Learning the redundancy in the environment

3. Coding

4. Theory creation

Theory construction

STIMULI PERCEPTION

RULE

CONSTRUCT CONCEPT PRINCIPLE

THEORY

Coding systems

CONSUMABLES

LIQUIDSSOLIDS

MEAT PREPAREDVEGETABLES COLLECTEDFRUITS

WATERMILK COFFEE

WHY USE CODING?

• Helps in building generic code that can be transferred to other situations.

• Insightful ways of solving problems

• Brunner, Matter, O’Dowd experiment

• William hull experiment

• Positive (appropriate application) as well as negative transfer (Misapplication)

Three problems!

• The conditions of code acquisition

• Problem of creativity• How do you invent coding systems

• How do you know which ones to use?

• Problem of instruction

Conditions of code acquisition

1. The role of set- Hull’s experiment- incidental vs intentional

Take time VTE, look for patterns, develop generic codes, transfer

2. Needs state Coding generality depend on optimum motivational state

Brunner, Matter, O’Dowd Experiment• High motivated less VTE-fail to develop generic codes

• High motivated -High stress less VTE-fail to develop generic codes

3. Mastery of original learning• Overtraining & Mastery coding aids generic coding-motivation not high

• Require less practice than rote

4. Diversity of training• Different variables

• Different conditions

• Avoid concreteness

Problem of Creativity

• Creativity allows combination of different coding systems into new generic ones that allows predictability and transferability

• E.g. creating a theory

Problem of instruction

• Causal fertility

• Focus on Problem solving

CHAP2: Learning and ThinkingHarvard Educational Review (1959) 29, 184-192

1. Features in generic learning that encourage thinking Organization

Manipulation

2. Passivity in knowledge acquisition

3. Episodic curriculum

4. Quality of teachers

CHAP3: Functions of TeachingAddress at Rhode Island College of Education April 1959

1. Sparing the learner of dangerous consequences of learning.

2. Teaching is not about presentation of material before the students.

3. Teacher must remove learning from the context

4. Reversibility

• Two ways of knowledge transfer: Specific transfer

Non-Specific transfer

• Teaching concepts without making clear their context is uneconomical.

• Scholars should work in conjunction with teachers to prepare curricula.

CHAP4: Importance of StructureThe Process of Education (1960), Cambridge : Harvard University Press

CHAP5:Readiness for LearningThe Process of Education (1960), Harvard University Press

• Intellectual development and readiness

• Spiral curriculum

• Act of Learning

• Acquisition-refinement of previous knowledge

• Transformation-Manipulating info to apply it to new problems.

• Evaluation-the way we have manipulated information is adequate to the task?

CHAP6: The Act of DiscoveryThe Harvard Educational Review (1961) 31, 21-32

Discovery is ‘a matter of rearranging or transforming evidence in such a way that one is enabled to go beyond the evidence so reassembled to

new insights’.

• Hypothetical mode of teaching encourages discovery.

• Benefits of discovery learning:

1. Intellectual potency-

2. Intrinsic Rewards

3. Learning the heuristics of discovery

4. Conversation of memory

CHAP7:The Course of Cognitive GrowthAmerican Psychologist (1964) 19, 1-15

• Systems for processing information and representing world: Enactive representation Iconic representation Symbolic representation

• Principal change in humans:• Alloplastic• Autoplastic

• Integration – any highly skilled activity can be decomposed into simpler components

• Representation – the end product of a system of coding and processing of past experience that renders retrieved information relevant and useable in the present

• He’s concerned with the transition from iconic to symbolic representation

• He says the growth of symbolic functioning is unique to humans

CHAP8: MAN ACOURSE OF STUDY (MACOS)ESI Quarterly

• Organized around: tool-making, language, social organization, childhood, and man’s urge to explain.

• section on language include: what communication is, the design features of a language and the role of language in shaping group activities e.g hunting

• The tool-making section is designed from a philosophical approach; the object is to explore how tools affected man's evolution.

• The unit on social organization focuses on the nature of structure in a society, roles filled by people, and the world view of a society.

• The childrearing unit centers around: • the extent to which human childhood leads to dominance of sentiment in human life• the human tendency toward mastery of skill for its own sake• the shaping of man by the patterning of childhood. • Man's drive to explicate and represent his world through symbolic systems.

• Three pedagogical techniques emphasized to achieve the goals of these units are:• Contrasting• Games• Stimulating self-consciousness about assumptions.

PERFECTIBILITY OF INTELLECT

• compacting experience into mental models.

• Forming rich mental models requires deep thinking

• The best mental models prepare the mind for inquiry

• Pursue the unknown with courageous intuition

• Problem finding, not just problem solving

THE WILL TO LEARNtowards a theory of instruction (1966), NY

• The will to learn is an intrinsic motive

• Problem under school environment where:• curriculum is set

• students confined and a fixed path

• fails to enlist curiosity, a desire for competence, aspiration to emulate a

model and a deep sense of commitment to the web of social reciprocity.

• How these energies may be cultivated in school leaning?

• “satisfying state of affairs” that promote learning are rarely found outside of the learning in school punishments, grades, gold stars and percentages.

• External reinforcements may get a particular act going, may lead to repetition but does not nourish long course of learning.

GROWTH OF MINDThe relevance of education (1971), NY

• Constructing course of study

• Stimulating thought in school

NATURE AND USES OF IMMATURITYThe growth of competence (1972)

• Topic is human ontogeny (study of entire life span) in evolution

• how young ones brought from initial infantile inadequacy to highly specialized functioning at maturity?

• Period of immaturity creates more competencies based on cultural and social learning

• The cognitive skills in humans illustrated in:• combinatorial play• use of tools to explore and transform physical environment• emergence of social reciprocity• communicative symbols• observational teaching and learning-----formation of culture.

• Brunner raises two questions:• How children are able to learn linguistic conventions of their culture?• Role of language and other cultural conventions in introducing children to

particular ways of thinking, acting and interacting?

CHILD’S PLAYNew scientist (1972)

• The more complex a skill to be learned, the lower the optimum motivational levelrequired for fastest learning. Play provides the means for reducing excessive drive.

• Play dissociates goal oriented behavior from its principal drive system and customaryreinforcements.

• Prior play with materials improves children’s problem solving with those materials later.

• Result of meta-analysis of studies indicate that the ones with most interesting andfulfilling lives were the ones who had managed to keep a sense of playfulness at center ofthings.

• Rule structure of human play and games that sensitizes child to rules of culture and forpreparation for a particular way of life have special role in nurturing culture. Play istherefore a serious business.

PATTERNS OF GROWTHInaugural lecture at Oxford University

• Growth is organized around acquisition of skills. To cultivate growth is to provide conditions in which human beings can become skillful in pursuit of their goals.

• While talking about relationship between culture and growth he contends that culture is a repository of knowledge, skills and values. It is a support system for giving hope and a sense of capability to its members.

POVERTY AND CHILDHOODOxford Review of Education

• Children with high degree of achievement motivation tend to become brighter asthey grow older while those with a passive outlook tend to fall behind theirdevelopmental potential. Degree of achievement motivation related to sociocultural background of child. Middle class children are more strongly motivatedtowards achievement than lower class children.

• Lower class children are far less able to achieve decentration, goals are short range and restricted

• Parochializing effect of culture of poverty keeps language tied to context, tied to common experience, restricted to habitual ways of one’s own group.

• Middle class mothers use analytic language, lower class mothers often order, plead or complain than giving feedback.

• Important to bring change so that poor gain a sense of power through jobs, community activation. Otherwise the system of industrial revolution would fail.

THE ROLE OF TUTORING IN PROBLEM SOLVINGjournal of child Psychology

1. Recruitment of leaner's interest and concentration

2. Reduction in degrees of freedom: simplifying task by focusing on one question so that learner can manage the task. Other researchers have called this “contigent shifting”.

3. Direction Maintaince: Keeping the learner's attention and motivation on the task and ultimate goal (each task may have several steps and goals which the learner gets stuck on)

4. Marking critical features: Highlighting relevant features of a task and discrepancies between what the learner produces and what is correct.

5. Frustration control: Problem solving would be less dangerous or stressful with a tutor than without".

6. Demonstration: or "modelling" of solutions of the task with the expectation that tutee would imitate it back in more appropriate form.

That is All!!