Jerome Bruner:

a learning
theorist

Discovery learning and constructivism

 Jerome Bruner
• Rooted mainly in the study of cognition
• Reacted against behaviorist model of
learning
• Change from behaviorist model
 Bruner’s Beliefs

• 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.
 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
 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.
 Discovery learning

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)

• Learner builds on past experience
• Students interact with environment
• Discovers facts and relationships on own
• Students create own construct of knowledge through narrative
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
 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
Examples of Discovery Learning
• learning with and through
narratives
• case-based learning
• guided discovery
• problem-based learning
• simulation-based learning
• incidental learning
The Inquiry Cycle
 Questions
Children asking questions, or being stimulated to ask questions
by their teachers, lies at the heart of the process
 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.
 Modes of Representation 1

• 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 2
• 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).
 I. Enactive (action-based)
➢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)
 II. Iconic (image-based)
➢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.
 III. Symbolic (language-based)
➢ 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…
 Scaffolding
• 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 Purposes
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
 Misty Mountain Top: The
‘pure’ science (didactic)

Guiding them up the mountain

making connections between
the familiar and the new
(constructivism)

Safe in the valleys with the

familiar but not exploring
the new (child entered)
 Activity 1 (10 mins)

• Stimulating creativity
• Make something scientific from your
modelling clay - now ask 5 scientific
questions about that thing
 Activity 2 (10 mins)
• 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 3 (15 mins)
• 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 4 (15 mins)

• 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?
 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