Toward+a+Theory+of+Instruction

Educators Thinkspace Home //Toward a Theory of Instruction//, by Jerome Bruner Citation: Bruner, Jerome. (1966). //Toward a Theory of Instruction//. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. More works by Jerome Bruner

This book is a collection of essays on instruction. Instruction facilitates natural human mental growth characterized by phases of representing understanding, named enactive, iconic, and symbolic. Because of these different natural phases, meaningful instruction can be carried out at any level of understanding. Following are what I take to be key ideas from 4 of the essays (these provide a sense for the remainder of the book), and quotes.
 * Summary**:

Patterns of Growth: Mental growth depends on ones ability to represent with increasingly sophisticated and nuanced means. The three basic phases in human mental growth are: enactive (where one enacts the representation--one demonstrates how to ride a bike by riding a bike) iconic (where one abstracts from the action some features which are conceptually linked to the action--as one might show a series of pictures to demonstrate how to fry an egg), and symbolic (where one uses arbitrary symbols to represent the action--as one might write instructions, or tell a person through language how to do something). The phases increase in sophistication and comprehension (for example, symbolic representation can describe elements that one could never see, such as e=mc2.

quote: “the heart of the educational process consists of providing aids and dialogues for translating experience into more powerful systems of notation and ordering” (21)

Education as Social Invention: The ultimate aims of a society’s education have prerequisites.

quote: “there is an appropriate version of any skill or knowledge that may be imparted at whatever age one wishes to begin teaching—however preparatory the version may be. The choice of the earlier version is based upon what it is one is hoping to cumulate” (35).

Notes on a theory of instruction: A theory of instruction is prescriptive and normative, theories of learning are descriptive. A theory of instruction has four major features: it should specify experiences that cultivate or facilitate a predisposition toward learning. It should specify ways a subject matter should be structured to be most readily grasped by learners. It should specify the best sequencing of materials for learners to grasp. And it should specify “the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments in the process of learning and teaching” (41).

quote: “To instruct someone in these 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. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries in that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process, not a product.” (72)

Man: a course of study: This chapter is a course plan to teach about man, or civilization. It is a fascinating attempt and illustration of how one might go about designing a course following the principles of the other essays in the book. It considers the structure of the course, the themes of the course, and the pedagocial approach.

quote: [he gives 5 aims of the course, here are 3]: “ To extend [their respect and confidence in the power of their own mind] to think about the human condition, man’s plight, and his social life. . . To provide a set of workable models that make it simpler to analyze the nature of the social world in which we live and the condition in which man finds himself. . . To leave the student with a sense of the unfinished business of man’s evolution” (101).

“the heart of the educational process consists of providing aids and dialogues for translating experience into more powerful systems of notation and ordering” (21)
 * Consolidated Quotes:**

“there is an appropriate version of any skill or knowledge that may be imparted at whatever age one wishes to begin teaching—however preparatory the version may be. The choice of the earlier version is based upon what it is one is hoping to cumulate” (35).

“To instruct someone in these 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. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries in that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowedge-getting. Knowing is a process, not a product.” (72)

"Growth is characterized by increasing independence of response from the immediate nature of the stimulus." (5)
 * More quotes:**

"Growth depends upon internalizing events into a 'storage' system that corresponsds to the environment." (5)

"Intellectual growth involves an increasing capacity to say to oneself and others,by means of words or symbols, what one has done or what one will do." (5)

"A great deal of growth consists of the child's being able to maintain an invariant response in the face of changing states of the stimulating environment or learning to alter his response in the presence of an unchanging stimulus environment." (5)

"Intellectual development depends upon a systematic and contingent interaction between a tutor and a learner" (6)

"Teaching is vastly facilitated by the medium of language, which ends by being not only the medium for exchange but the instrument that the learner can then use himself in bringing order into the environment." (6)

"Intellectual development is marked by increasing capacity to deal with several alternatives simultaneously, to tend to several sequences during the same period of time, and to allocate time and attention in a manner appropriate to these multiple demands." (6)

“The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise” (127)

“Where learning is dominated by strong extrinsic rewards and punishments, it becomes specific to the requirements of the particular learning task” (136)

“There are several quite straightforward ways of stimulating problem solving. One is to train teachers to want it. . . But teachers can be encouraged to like it, interestingly enough, by providing them and their children with materials and lessons that permit legitimate problem solving and permit the teacher to recognize it” (158).