Jerome Bruner's
Thoughts on Education

"Unfortunately, the formalism of school learning has somehow devalued intuition.”

--The Process of Education, p. 58

“Improving the use of intuitive thinking by teachers is as much a problem as improving its use by students.”

--The Process of Education, p. 56

Cognition

"Knowing and communicating are in their nature highly interdependent, indeed virtually inseparable."

--The Culture of Education, p. 3

“Learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 4

“Explaining what children do is not enough; the new agenda is to determine what they think the are doing and what their reasons are for doing it.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 49

“The child is not merely ignorant or an empty vessel, but somebody able to reason, to make sense, both on her own and through discourse with others… capable of thinking about her own thinking, and of correcting her ideas and notions through reflection… The child, in a word, is seen as an epistemologist as well as a learner.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 57

Curriculum

“You cannot teacher-proof a curriculum any more that you can parent-proof a family.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 84

"A curriculum is like an animated conversation on a topic that can never be fully defined, although one can set limits upon it."

--The Culture of Education, p. 116

"The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace - the thousand pictures."

--The Culture of Education, p. 129

Assessment

“It is obvious that an examination can be bad in the sense of emphasizing trivial aspects of a subject.”

--The Process of Education, p. 30

"Given particular subject matter or a particular concept, it is easy to ask trivial questions or to lead the child to ask trivial questions. The trick is to find the medium questions that can be answered and that take you somewhere."

--The Process of Education, p. 40

In many democratic cultures, I think, we have become so preoccupied with the more formal criteria of ‘performance’ and with the bureaucratic demands of education as an institution that we have neglected this [agency/self-esteem] personal side of education.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 39

 

"An examination can be bad in the sense of emphasizing trivial aspects of a subject... encouraging teaching in a disconnected fashion and learning by rote."

--The Process of Education, p. 30

 

Our system of assessment tends to "emphasize the acquisition of factual knowledge, primarily because that is what is most easily evaluated; moreover, it tends to emphasize the correct answer, since it is the correct answer on the straightforward examination that can be graded as correct."

--The Process of Education, p. 66

Culture

“A failure to equip minds with the social skills for understanding and feeling and acting in a cultural world is not simply scoring a pedagogical zero. It risks creating alienation, defiance, and practical incompetence. And all of these undermine the viability of a culture.”

--The Culture of Education, pp. 42-43

Culture is "the way of life and thought that we construct, negotiate, institutionalize, and finally (after it's all settled) end up calling 'reality' to comfort ourselves."

--The Culture of Education, p. 87

"Now, school is a culture itself, not just a preparation for it, a warming up."

--The Culture of Education, p. 98

“Teachers and schools, let it be said, did not create the conditions that have made American education so difficult. They did not create an underclass… Nor did they… create the disgraceful condition of homelessness on one side and consumerism on the other… Nor the drug problem.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 118

Meaning

“Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.”

--The Process of Education, p. 17

"The more fundamental or basic is the idea he [the student] has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems.”

--The Process of Education, p. 18

"What learning general or fundamental principles does is to ensure that memory loss will not mean total loss, that what remains will permit us to reconstruct the details when needed. A good theory is the vehicle not only for understanding a phenomenon now but also for remembering it tomorrow."

--The Process of Education, p. 25

“We might ask, as a criterion for any subject taught in primary school, whether, when fully developed, it is worth an adult’s knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. If the answer to both questions is negative or ambiguous, then the material is cluttering the curriculum.”

--The Process of Education, p. 52

The Product of Education

“The objective of education is not the production of self-confident fools.”

--The Process of Education, p. 65

 

"Knowing and communicating are in their nature highly interdependent, indeed virtually inseparable."

--The Culture of Education, p. 3

The inarticulate genius: "the student, who, by his operations and conclusions, reveals a deep grasp of a subject, but not the ability to 'say how it goes' ."
--The Process of Education, p. 55

The articulate idiot: the student "who is full of seemingly appropriate words but has no matching ability to use the ideas for which the words presumably stand."
--The Process of Education, p. 55

It takes a "sensitive teacher to distinguish an intuitive mistake - an interestingly wrong leap - from a stupid or ignorant mistake."
-- The Process of Education, p. 68

"Intelligence, in a word, reflects a micro-culture of praxis: the reference books one uses, the notes one habitually takes, the computer programs and databases one relies upon, and perhaps most important of all, the network of friends, colleagues, or mentors on whom one leans for feedback, help, advice, even just for company." (1966, p. 132).

Pedagogy

“A choice of pedagogy inevitably communicates a conception of the learning process and the learner. Pedagogy is never innocent. It is a medium that carries its own meaning.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 63

As a teacher, you do not wait for readiness to happen; you foster or ‘scaffold’ it by deepening the child’s powers at the stage where you find him or her now.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 120

“… many units drag on with no climax in understanding.”

--The Process of Education, p. 49

Motivation

“The best way to create interest in a subject is to render it worth knowing, which means to make the knowledge gained usable in one’s thinking beyond the situation in which the learning has occurred.”

--The Process of Education, p. 31

"Interest in the material is the best stimulus to learning, rather than such external goals as grades or later competitive advantage."

--The Process of Education, p. 14

Technology

Computers "provide a learner with powerful aids in mastering bodies of knowledge, particularly if the knowledge in question is well defined."

--The Culture of Education, p. 2

"The teacher's task as communicator, model, and identification figure can be supported by a wise use of a variety of devices that expand experience, clarify it, and give it personal significance."

--The Process of Education, p. 91

"For in certain respects, how the mind works is itself dependent on the tools at its disposal. How the hand works for example, cannot be fully appreciated unless one also takes into account whether it is equipped with a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, or a laser beam gun..."

--The Culture of Education, p. 2

"So, in a sense, the mere existence of computational devices (and a theory of computation about their mode of operating) can (and doubtless will) change our minds about how 'mind' works, just as the book did."

--The Culture of Education, p. 2-3

“Problems of quality in a curriculum cannot be dodged by the purchase of sixteen-millimeter projection equipment.”

--The Process of Education, p. 92

"What one does and how one teaches with the aid of such devices [teaching machines] depends upon the skill and wisdom that goes into the construction of a program of problems."

--The Process of Education, p. 83

"They [computers] can take some of the load of teaching of the teacher's shoulders, and, perhaps more important, that the machine can provide immediate correction or feedback to the student while his is in the act of learning."

--The Process of Education, p. 84

"The devices themselves cannot dictate their purpose. Unbridled enthusiasm for audio-visual aids or for teaching machines as panaceas overlook the paramount importance of what one is trying to accomplish"

--The Process of Education, p. 88

"Control systems, automation, new sources of power, new space to explore - all of these have livened interest in the nature of our schools and what our young people are learning in them."

--The Process of Education, p. 74

“One thing seems clear: if all students are helped to the full utilization of their intellectual powers, we will have a better chance of surviving as a democracy in an age of enormous technological and social complexity.”

--The Process of Education, p. 10

Reform

“Improving education requires teachers who understand and are committed to the improvements envisioned… We need to equip teachers with the necessary background training to take an effective part in reform.”

--The Culture of Education, p. 35

“What is needed in America – as in most countries of the developed world – is not simply a renewal of the skills that make a country a better competitor in the world markets, but a renewal and reconsideration of what I have called ‘school culture’… communities of learners…best when it is participatory, proactive, communal, collaborative, and given over to constructing meanings rather than receiving them.” The Culture of Education, p. 84

“It is surprising and somewhat discouraging how little attention has been paid to the intimate nature of teaching and school learning in the debates on education that have raged over the past decade. These debates have been so focused on performance and standards that they have mostly overlooked the means by which teachers and pupils alike go about their business in real-life classrooms – how teachers teach and how pupils learn”

--The Culture of Education, p. 86

“What we need is a school reform movement with a better sense of where we are going, with deeper convictions about what kind of people we want to be… All the standards in the world will not, like a helping hand, achieve the goal of making our multicultural, our threatened society come alive again, not alive just as a competitor in the world’s markets, but as a nation worth living in and for”

--The Culture of Education, p. 118

Structure

"Unless detail is placed into a structured pattern, it is rapidly forgotten" (The Process of Education, p. 24). We can represent multiple ideas or facts in simplified ways, such as remembering a formula by which many specific facts can be derived - or remembering the gist of an important soliloquy rather than remembering it word for word. "What learning general or fundamental principles does is to ensure that memory loss will not mean total loss, that what remains will permit us to reconstruct the details when needed. A good theory is the vehicle not only for understanding a phenomenon now but also for remembering it tomorrow" (The Process of Education, p. 25). When students understand the fundamental principles upon which factual knowledge is built, they have the ability to create and recreate the "facts" rather than being consumed with simply trying to memorize them.

Transfer of Learning

"An understanding of fundamental principles and ideas... appears to be the main road to adequate 'transfer of training' " (The Process of Education, p. 25). When one really understands ideas, events, or phenomenon at a deep, conceptual level, that knowledge is more easily transferred to related, yet different ideas, events, or phenomenon. When students understand mathematical principles, they are more able to apply those principles in many different situations. Bruner proposes that education should focus less on "specific transfer" (applicability to tasks that are highly similar to those originally learned) and more on "nonspecific transfer", "...the heart of the educational process - the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic and general ideas" (The Process of Education, p. 17) It is this type of learning that enables learners to apply what they know to more remote situations, solve complex problems, and have cognitive independence. It depends not on mastery of specific skills, but rather on foundational concepts and structures that can impact a wide array of problems and circumstances. "The more fundamental or basic is the idea he [the student] has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems" (The Process of Education, , p. 18).

Learner Needs and Abilities

Learning becomes a process of accumulation of ideas rather than one of finding meaning. As well, we must "devise materials that will challenge the superior student while not destroying the confidence and will-to-learn of those who are less fortunate" (The Process of Education, p. 70) Curriculum needs to address the needs of all learners and abilities. Our current standards movement, on one hand, attempts to ensure that all students will achieve a core of knowledge and standard of performance, yet it fails to take into account varying ability levels. Educators consumed with trying to meet standards (not of their own doing necessarily) may in fact be stressing the low ability student and at the same time boring the gifted one. Since there is no standard student there cannot be a standardized curriculum. We must strive for teaching individuals, and assess them accordingly.

Recommended Reading

Bruner, J. (1973). The Relevance of Education.