Assessment Post 3: Bruner

Jerome Bruner was a cognitive psychologist who emphasized that children arrange their world, or environment, into categories (Marsh, 2004 p 23). He identified three stages of development:
1. The Enactive Stage: Learning through action provides one with the necessary understanding of the environment.
2. The Iconic Stage: Children base their actions on impressions gained by the use of their senses.
3. The Symbolic Stage: Individuals employ symbol systems in order to gain understanding. That is that these symbols allow individuals to arrange and store ideas for later reference.

Bruner contended that individuals develop through these stages but that they may employ these different modes of learning at any time, possibly in simultaneously (Marsh, 2004 p 24). Bruner suggests that knowledge is discovered through personal experience and then enacted through these stages ( http://au.geocities.com/vanunoo/Humannature/bruner.html ). Thus if a teacher was to combine concrete, pictorial and symbolic in their presentation of material they will improve results.
Bruner’s work suggests that a classroom must cater to the variety of intelligence that exists within it. Thus as a teacher I should look to teach using methods that combine the active learning and the use of symbolic material. Bruner’s work suggests that students utilize what they already know and build upon it, this is similar to the process of assimilation as asserted by Piaget ( http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Bruner.htm#Research ). Utilising Bruner’s model of Discovery learning whereby students learn through active processes and effectively teach themselves through experience may be a successful way of running my classroom. Such a classroom would be based around experimentation and questioning as a catalyst for self-discovery and consequent learning ( http://copland.udel.edu/~jconway/EDST666.htm#dislrn ).