JEROME BRUNER  (CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY)

Jerome Seymour Bruner was an American psychologist who made significant

contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning
theory in educational psychology. Bruner was a senior research fellow at the New York
University School of Law. He received a B.A. in 1937 from Duke University and
a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1941.He taught and did research at Harvard
University, the University of Oxford, and New York University. A Review of General
Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Bruner as the 28th most cited
psychologist of the 20th century.

Constructivist Theory

A major theme in the theoretical framework of Bruner is that learning is an active

process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their
current/past knowledge. The learner selects and transforms information, constructs
hypotheses, and makes decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do so. Cognitive
structure (i.e., schema, mental models) provides meaning and organization to
experiences and allows the individual to “go beyond the information given”.

As far as instruction is concerned, the instructor should try and encourage

students to discover principles by themselves. The instructor and student should
engage in an active dialog (i.e., socratic learning). The task of the instructor is to
translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner’s current
state of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the
student continually builds upon what they have already learned.

Bruner (1966) states that a theory of instruction should address four major
aspects: (1) predisposition towards learning, (2) the ways in which a body of knowledge
can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner, (3) the most
effective sequences in which to present material, and (4) the nature and pacing of
rewards and punishments. Good methods for structuring knowledge should result in
simplifying, generating new propositions, and increasing the manipulation of
information.

In his more recent work, Bruner (1986, 1990, 1996) has expanded his theoretical
framework to encompass the social and cultural aspects of learning as well as the
practice of law.

Application
Bruner’s constructivist theory is a general framework for instruction based upon
the study of cognition. Much of the theory is linked to child development research
(especially Piaget ). The ideas outlined in Bruner (1960) originated from a conference
focused on science and math learning. Bruner illustrated his theory in the context of
mathematics and social science programs for young children (see Bruner, 1973). The
original development of the framework for reasoning processes is described in Bruner,
Goodnow & Austin (1951). Bruner (1983) focuses on language learning in young
children.

Note that Constructivism is a very broad conceptual framework in philosophy and

science and Bruner’s theory represents one particular perspective.

Example:
“The concept of prime numbers appears to be more readily grasped when the
child, through construction, discovers that certain handfuls of beans cannot be laid out
in completed rows and columns. Such quantities have either to be laid out in a single file
or in an incomplete row-column design in which there is always one extra or one too few
to fill the pattern. These patterns, the child learns, happen to be called prime. It is easy
for the child to go from this step to the recognition that a multiple table , so called, is a
record sheet of quantities in completed mutiple rows and columns. Here is factoring,
multiplication and primes in a construction that can be visualized.”

Principles
1. Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the
student willing and able to learn (readiness).
2. Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student
(spiral organization).
3. Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps
(going beyond the information given).

LEV VYGOTSKY (SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY)

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work

on psychological development in children. Vygotsky began researching topics such as
language, attention, and memory with the help of students, including Alexei Leontiev
and Alexander Luria.

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934) has become the foundation of much research
and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly of what
has become known as sociocultural theory.
Sociocultural theory views human development as a socially mediated process in
which children acquire their cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies
through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.
Vygotsky's theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in the
development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), as he believed strongly that community
plays a central role in the process of "making meaning."
 Unlike Piaget's notion that childrens' development must necessarily precede their
learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process
of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p.
90).  In other words, social learning tends to precede (i.e., come before) development.
Vygotsky has developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive development. He
developed his theories at around the same time as Jean Piaget was starting to develop
his ideas (1920's and 30's), but he died at the age of 38, and so his theories are
incomplete - although some of his writings are still being translated from Russian.
No single principle (such as Piaget's equilibration) can account for development.
Individual development cannot be understood without reference to the social and
cultural context within which it is embedded. Higher mental processes in the individual
have their origin in social processes.

Vygotsky's theory differs from that of Piaget in a number of important ways:

1: Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development.

This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages and content of development
(Vygotsky does not refer to stages in the way that Piaget does).
Hence Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas
Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

2: Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to

cognitive development.

Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning.
Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the
zone of proximal development as children and their partner's co-construct knowledge. In
contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent
explorations in which children construct knowledge of their own.
For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they
think and what they think about.

3: Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in

cognitive development.
According to Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e.,
thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially
separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age,
producing verbal thought (inner speech).
For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.
4: According to Vygotsky adults are an important source of cognitive
development.
Adults transmit their culture's tools of intellectual adaptation that children internalize. In
contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction promotes
social perspective taking.

Effects of Culture: - Tools of intellectual adaptation

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with the basic abilities for intellectual
development called 'elementary mental functions' (Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and
sensory abilities).
Elementary mental functions include –

  Attention
 Sensation
 Perception
 Memory
Eventually, through interaction within the sociocultural environment, these are
developed into more sophisticated and effective mental processes which Vygotsky
refers to as 'higher mental functions.'
Each culture provides its children tools of intellectual adaptation that allow them to
use the basic mental functions more effectively/adaptively.
Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky’s term for methods of thinking and
problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with the
more knowledgeable members of society.
For example, memory in young children this is limited by biological factors. However,
culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.  For example, in western
culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other
strategies must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, or carrying
pebbles, or repetition of the names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.
Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as
affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which
a person develops and therefore socio-culturally determined. The tools of intellectual
adaptation, therefore, vary from culture to culture - as in the memory example.

NOAM CHOMSKY (LINGUISTIC THEORY)

Avram Noam Chomsky. The basis of Chomsky's linguistic theory lies in biolinguistics,
the linguistic school that holds that the principles underpinning the structure of language
are biologically preset in the human mind and hence genetically inherited.As such he
argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of
sociocultural differences. In adopting this position Chomsky rejects the radical
behaviorist psychology of B. F. Skinner, who viewed behavior (including talking and
thinking) as a completely learned product of the interactions between organisms and
their environments. Accordingly, Chomsky argues that language is a unique
evolutionary development of the human species and distinguished from modes of
communication used by any other animal species. Chomsky's nativist, internalist view of
language is consistent with the philosophical school of "rationalism" and contrasts with
the anti-nativist, externalist view of language consistent with the philosophical school of
"empiricism", which contends that all knowledge, including language, comes from
external stimuli.
Languages share certain basic traits
Chomsky and other linguists have said that all languages contain similar
elements. For example, globally speaking, language breaks down into similar categories
of words: nouns, verbs, and adjectives, to name three.
Another shared characteristic of language is recursion. With rare exceptions, all
languages use structures that repeat themselves, allowing us to expand those
structures almost infinitely.
For example, take the structure of a descriptor. In almost every known language,
it’s possible to repeat descriptors over and over again: “She wore an itsy-bitsy, teeny-
weeny, yellow polka dot bikini.”
Strictly speaking, more adjectives could be added to further describe that bikini,
each embedded within the existing structure.
The recursive property of language is sometimes called “nesting,” because in
almost all languages, sentences can be expanded by placing repeating structures inside
each other.
Chomsky and others have argued that because almost all languages share these
characteristics despite their other variations, we may be born preprogrammed with a
universal grammar.

We learn language almost effortlessly

Linguists like Chomsky have argued for a universal grammar in part because
children everywhere develop language in very similar ways in short periods of time with
little assistance. Children show awareness of language categories at extremely early
ages, long before any overt instruction occurs.
For example, one study showed that 18-month-old children recognized “a doke”
referred to a thing and “praching” referred to an action, showing they understood the
form of the word. Having the article “a” before it or ending with “-ing” determined
whether the word was an object or an event.
 It’s possible they had learned these ideas from listening to people talk, but those
who espouse the idea of a universal grammar say it’s more likely that they have an
innate understanding of how words function, even if they don’t know the words
themselves.
And we learn in the same sequence
Proponents of universal grammar say children the world over naturally develop
language in the same sequence of steps.
So, what does that shared developmental pattern look like? Many linguists agree
that there are three basic stages:
 learning sounds
 learning words
 learning sentences
We learn despite a ‘poverty of stimulus’
Chomsky and others have also argued that we learn complex languages, with
their intricate grammatical rules and limitations, without receiving explicit instruction.
For example, children automatically grasp the correct way to arrange dependent
sentence structures without being taught.
We know to say “The boy who is swimming wants to eat lunch” instead of “The
boy wants to eat lunch who is swimming.”
Despite this lack of instructional stimulus, we still learn and use our native
languages, understanding the rules that govern them. We wind up knowing a lot more
about how our languages work than we’re ever overtly taught.

ALBERT BANDURA ( SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY)

In social learning theory, Albert Bandura (1977) agrees with the behaviorist learning
theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. However, he adds two
important ideas:

1. Mediating processes occur between stimuli & responses.

2. Behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational
learning.

Observational Learning

Children observe the people around them behaving in various ways. This is
illustrated during the famous Bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1961).
Individuals that are observed are called models. In society, children are
surrounded by many influential models, such as parents within the family, characters on
children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at school. These models
provide examples of behavior to observe and imitate, e.g., masculine and feminine, pro
and anti-social, etc.
Children pay attention to some of these people (models) and encode their
behavior.  At a later time they may imitate (i.e., copy) the behavior they have observed.
They may do this regardless of whether the behavior is ‘gender appropriate’ or not, but
there are a number of processes that make it more likely that a child will reproduce the
behavior that its society deems appropriate for its gender.
First, the child is more likely to attend to and imitate those people it perceives as
similar to itself. Consequently, it is more likely to imitate behavior modeled by people of
the same gender.
Second, the people around the child will respond to the behavior it imitates with
either reinforcement or punishment.  If a child imitates a model’s behavior and the
consequences are rewarding, the child is likely to continue performing the behavior. If a
parent sees a little girl consoling her teddy bear and says “what a kind girl you are,” this
is rewarding for the child and makes it more likely that she will repeat the behavior.  Her
behavior has been reinforced (i.e.,strengthened).
Reinforcement can be external or internal and can be positive or negative.  If a
child wants approval from parents or peers, this approval is an external reinforcement,
but feeling happy about being approved of is an internal reinforcement.  A child will
behave in a way which it believes will earn approval because it desires approval. 
Positive (or negative) reinforcement will have little impact if the reinforcement
offered externally does not match with an individual's needs.  Reinforcement can be
positive or negative, but the important factor is that it will usually lead to a change in a
person's behavior.
Third, the child will also take into account of what happens to other people when
deciding whether or not to copy someone’s actions.  A person learns by observing the
consequences of another person’s (i.e., models) behavior, e.g., a younger sister
observing an older sister being rewarded for a particular behavior is more likely to
repeat that behavior herself.  This is known as vicarious reinforcement.
This relates to an attachment to specific models that possess qualities seen as
rewarding. Children will have a number of models with whom they identify. These may
be people in their immediate world, such as parents or older siblings, or could be
fantasy characters or people in the media. The motivation to identify with a particular
model is that they have a quality which the individual would like to possess.
Identification occurs with another person (the model) and involves taking on (or
adopting) observed behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes of the person with whom
you are identifying.
The term identification as used by Social Learning Theory is similar to the
Freudian term related to the Oedipus complex.  For example, they both involve
internalizing or adopting another person’s behavior.  However, during the Oedipus
complex, the child can only identify with the same sex parent, whereas with Social
Learning Theory the person (child or adult) can potentially identify with any other
person.
Identification is different to imitation as it may involve a number of behaviors
being adopted, whereas imitation usually involves copying a single behavior.

Mediational Processes

SLT is often described as the ‘bridge’ between traditional learning theory

(behaviorism) and the cognitive approach. This is because it focuses on how mental
(cognitive) factors are involved in learning.
Unlike Skinner, Bandura (1977) believes that humans are active information
processors and think about the relationship between their behavior and its
consequences.
Observational learning could not occur unless cognitive processes were at work.
These mental factors mediate in the learning process to determine whether a new
response is acquired.
Therefore, individuals do not automatically observe the behavior of a model and
imitate it. There is some thought prior to imitation, and this consideration is called
mediational processes. This occurs between observing the behavior (stimulus) and
imitating it or not (response)
There are four mediational processes proposed by Bandura:

1. Attention: The individual needs to pay attention to the behavior and its
consequences and form a mental representation of the behavior. For a behavior
to be imitated, it has to grab our attention. We observe many behaviors on a daily
basis, and many of these are not noteworthy. Attention is therefore extremely
important in whether a behavior influences others imitating it.
2. Retention: How well the behavior is remembered. The behavior may be noticed
but is it not always remembered which obviously prevents imitation. It is
important therefore that a memory of the behavior is formed to be performed later
by the observer.

Much of social learning is not immediate, so this process is especially vital in

those cases. Even if the behavior is reproduced shortly after seeing it, there
needs to be a memory to refer to.

3. Reproduction: This is the ability to perform the behavior that the model has just
demonstrated. We see much behavior on a daily basis that we would like to be
able to imitate but that this not always possible. We are limited by our physical
ability and for that reason, even if we wish to reproduce the behavior, we cannot.
 This influences our decisions whether to try and imitate it or not. Imagine the
scenario of a 90-year-old-lady who struggles to walk watching Dancing on Ice.
She may appreciate that the skill is a desirable one, but she will not attempt to
imitate it because she physically cannot do it.
4. Motivation: The will to perform the behavior. The rewards and punishment that
follow a behavior will be considered by the observer. If the perceived rewards
outweigh the perceived costs (if there are any), then the behavior will be more
likely to be imitated by the observer. If the vicarious reinforcement is not seen to

Jean Piaget (Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development)

Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a

mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait,
and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment.

Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive
development. His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development,
detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but
ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.
What Piaget wanted to do was not to measure how well children could count,
spell or solve problems as a way of grading their I.Q. What he was more interested in
was the way in which fundamental concepts like the very idea of number, time,
quantity, causality, justice and so on emerged. Before Piaget’s work, the common
assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than
adults. Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to
adults.
According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure
(genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are
based.

Piaget's Theory Differs From Others In Several Ways:

▪ It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.

▪ It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning
of information or specific behaviors.
▪ It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather
than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.
The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant,
and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using
hypotheses. 
To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes
as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an
understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what
they already know and what they discover in their environment.

There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Cognitive Theory:

1. Schemas (building blocks of knowledge).

2. Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another
(equilibrium, assimilation, and  accommodation).
3. Stages of Cognitive Development:

o sensorimotor,
o preoperational,
o concrete operational,
o formal operational.

Schemas

Imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world. It
would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your
past experience or to plan future actions.
Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us
to form a mental representation of the world. Piaget (1952,) defined a schema as:
"a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly
interconnected and governed by a core meaning."
In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of
intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of
schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including
objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.

Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move

through four different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing
sophistication of children's thought
His theory focuses on understanding how children acquire knowledge regarding
fundamental concepts such as object permanence, number, categorization,
quantity, causality, and justice.
Piaget's four stages of cognitive development include:
1. Sensorimotor: Birth to ages 18-24 months.
2. Preoperational: Toddlerhood (18-24 months) through early childhood (age 7).
3. Concrete operational: Ages 7 to 11 years.
4. Formal operational: Adolescence to adulthood.
Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is
determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment.
Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate
at which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the
later stages.
Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age -
although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the
average child would reach each stage.
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth - 2 years)
The main achievement during this stage is object permanence - knowing that an
object still exists, even if it is hidden.
It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e., a schema) of the object.

Preoperational Stage (2 - 7 years)

During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the
ability to make one thing - a word or an object - stand for something other than itself.
Thinking is still egocentric, and the infant has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others.

Concrete Operational Stage (7 - 11 years)

Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive
development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought.
This means the child can work things out internally in their head (rather than physically
try things out in the real world).
Children can conserve number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9).
Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even
though its appearance changes.

Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over)

The formal operational stage begins at approximately age eleven and lasts into
adulthood. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts,
and logically test hypotheses.