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Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

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Jerome Bruner: a learning theorist Discovery learning and constructivism
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Page 1: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Jerome Bruner: a learning

theorist

Discovery learning and constructivism

Page 2: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Jerome Bruner• Rooted mainly in the study of cognition

• Reacted against behaviorist model of learning

• Change from behaviorist model

Page 3: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Bruner believes that students must be active—they must identify key principles for themselves rather than simply accepting teachers’ explanations.

• This process has been called DISCOVERY LEARNING.

Bruner’s Beliefs

Page 4: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

What ideas and influences are associated with Bruner?

1. Constructivism • paradigm of learning • learners create their own subjective

constructs of reality

2. Discovery learning • method of instruction • learning is best achieved through a process

of inquiry

Page 5: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

What ideas and influences are associated with Bruner?

• Other Constructivists include Piaget & Vygotsky

• Builds on the concept of stages of development (Piaget)

• Environment has bigger role in learning development.

• Unlike Piaget however, Bruner argued that social factors, particularly language, were important for cognitive growth.

Page 6: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

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

Teaching method

• Inquiry based process • Focuses on learning through experience • Inductive Reasoning – using specific

examples to formulate a general principle.

• Spiral construction of curriculum (revisits concepts)

Page 7: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Advantages of Discovery Learning

• active engagement • promotes motivation • promotes ownership of

learning • the development of

creativity and problem solving skills.

• a tailored learning experience

• have fun

Page 8: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

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

recognise misconceptions

Page 9: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Examples of Discovery Learning• learning with and through

narratives • case-based learning • guided discovery • problem-based learning • simulation-based learning • incidental learning

Page 10: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

The Inquiry Cycle

Page 11: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Questions

Children asking questions, or being stimulated to ask questions by their teachers, lies at the heart of the process

Page 12: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Discovery in Action

• A distinction is usually made between pure discovery learning, in which the students work on their own to a

very great extent, and guided discovery, in which the

teacher provides some direction.

• Discovery Learning – Bruner’s approach, in which

students work on their own to discover basic principles

• Guided Discovery – An adaptation of discovery

learning, in which the teacher provides some direction.

Page 13: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Bruner suggested that different ways of thinking (or representation) were important at different ages

• In contrast, Piaget emphasised that children developed sequentially through different stages of development.

• The enactive mode (used in 1st 18 months) • The iconic mode (develops from 18 months) • The symbolic mode (6 to 7 years onwards)

Modes of Representation 1

Page 14: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Each of Bruner's stages of representation builds off of the knowledge and information learned in the previous stage, or in other words, the stage before acts as scaffolding for the next stage.

• Each stage is a "way in which information or knowledge are stored and encoded in memory" (Mcleod, 2008).

Modes of Representation 2

Page 15: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

➢Sometimes called the concrete stage, this first stage involves a tangible hands-on method of learning.

➢Bruner believed that "learning begins with an action - touching, feeling, and manipulating" (Brahier, 2009, p. 52).

➢In science education, manipulatives are the concrete objects with which the actions are performed.

➢Common examples of manipulatives used in this stage in science education are leaves, plants, water, plasticine, straws (anything tangible)

I. Enactive (action-based)

Page 16: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

➢Sometimes called the pictorial stage, this second stage involves images or other visuals to represent the concrete situation enacted in the first stage.

➢One way of doing this is to simply draw images of the objects on paper or to picture them in one's head.

➢Other ways could be through the use of shapes, diagrams, and graphs.

II. Iconic (image-based)

Page 17: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

➢ Sometimes called the abstract stage, the last stage takes the images from the second stage and represents them using words and symbols.

➢ The use of words and symbols "allows a student to organize information in the mind by relating concepts together" (Brahier, 2009, p. 53).

➢ The words and symbols are abstractions, they do not necessarily have a direct connection to the information.

➢ For example, a number is a symbol used to describe how many of something there are, but the number in itself has little meaning without the understanding of it means for there to be that number of something.

➢ Other examples would be Chemical symbols (H2O) or circuit symbols ➢ Finally, language and words are another way to abstractly represent the

idea. In the context of science, this could be the use of words such as current, force, growth, MRS NERG, material etc…

III. Symbolic (language-based)

Page 18: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) – adults particularly parents, support children's cognitive development through everyday play interactions.

• Scaffolding is a temporary support structure around that child’s attempts to understand new ideas and complete new tasks.

Scaffolding

Page 19: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

The purpose of the support is to allow the child to achieve higher levels of development by: ➢ simplifying the task or idea ➢motivating and encouraging the child ➢highlighting important task elements or

errors ➢giving models that can be imitated

Scaffolding Purposes

Page 20: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

Misty Mountain Top: The ‘pure’ science (didactic)

Safe in the valleys with the familiar but not exploring

the new (child entered)

Guiding them up the mountain making connections between

the familiar and the new (constructivism)

Page 21: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Stimulating creativity

• Make something scientific from your modelling clay - now ask 5 scientific questions about that thing

Activity 1 (10 mins)

Page 22: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• You have an object on your table?

• What questions can you ask about the object?

• Which of these could you set out to explore?

• Are there good or bad questions (pedagogically speaking?)

• What is the journey from the familiar to the new?

• Can you find an inquiry for each of the 5 enquiry types (OoT, I&C, PS, FT, RSS)

Activity 2 (10 mins)

Page 23: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• Create you own idea for a lesson involving discovery learning? Think about the types of active learning (inquiry) the child might carry out?

• How will you link this to existing knowledge ideas?

• What are the new things you are going to introduce?

• What will be the stimulus for the questions that they might ask?

Activity 3 (15 mins)

Page 24: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

• On your table you have 2/3 story books working in pairs have a look at your story

• What science might come from this artefact? Where might it take you?

Activity 4 (15 mins)

Page 25: Jerome Bruner: Discovery Learning

References• Kearsley, G (2008). Constructivist theory 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 from http://www.bookrags.com/biography/jerome-seymour-bruner/

• Learning Theories Knowledgeable - Discovery Learning (Bruner) at Learning-Theories.com

• Bruner, , Jerome S. (2001). In Gale encyclopedia of Psychology [Web] from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0000/ai_2699000048

• http://bruners-stages.wikispaces.com/Bruner's+Stages+of+Representation


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