How Children Develop and Learn

Hayley Thomson A5PL04

How Children Develop and Learn

Outcome 2

Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner was born in New York City in 1915. At the age of 17 he began studying at Duke University, and then at Harvard where he received his PhD in 1947. He became a member of a faculty after gaining his PhD, and obtained the position as professor of psychology, as well as director and founder of the Centre for Cognitive Studies.

‘During World War 2, Bruner worked as a social psychologist exploring propaganda public opinion and social attitudes for U.S. Army intelligence.’

www.infed.org

In the 1940’s, Bruner began working alongside Leo Postman, on the ways in which perception is influenced by motivations, needs and expectations (mental sets). They analysed perception from an operative orientation. Bruner also started inspecting the function of procedures in the course of human categorisation, and more commonly, the evolution of human cognition. This led him to a great interest in the cognitive development of children.

Bruner highlights the capability of humans learning which is unaided by observable behaviour, for example, we can influence the world around us by commissioned mental actions rather than by trial and error. He found that our cognitive growth is of culture, or environmental impact, and the occurrence of internal actions to process the information.

Hayley Thomson A5PL04

He believed the expansion of ...

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Hayley Thomson A5PL04

He believed the expansion of the human mind was powerfully affected by three outbreaks of creations, which were artistically transmitted:

Instruments that could extend motor abilities e.g. pulleys, levers, wheels.
Instruments that could extend sensory abilities e.g. radio, Tv, hearing aids, glasses
Instruments that could extend intellectual abilities e.g. computers, language, number systems such as calculators.

Bruner went on to highlight three modes of representation, similar to theses developmental levels, which we use to assemble meaning:

Enactive representation – represented in the muscles: motor
Iconic representation – mental images to take the place of an event or object: sensory
Symbolic representation – symbol system: intellectual

‘Bruner maintains that all human cognitive activity involves categories. This is the process of building and using representations in order to make sense of the world. Incoming information is organised in terms of pre-existing categories, or we create new ones. Where we can’t perceive things, we “go beyond the information given” and make inferences based on what we do know.’

www.evolution.massey.ac.nz

Bruner committed himself to important experimental work, pinpointing our power to identify what belongs to a division of events or objects, and how we can determine what doesn’t belong. Concept formation is the first awareness that there are altered categories and classes, and that there are peculiar characteristics between events and objects that impact categorisation.

Hayley Thomson A5PL04

Concept attainment is the following level of development, where we can certify what those distinct attributes may be and how we can put them to use to discover what belongs and what doesn’t.

In the 1970’s, Bruners work developed and he started to investigate the courses by which communication is transmitted and the way infants begin to use speech. His Language Acquisition Support System strengthened his shift in intensity of the fundamental part that society plays in learning. He debated that in the “art of interacting” amongst humans, we “create the world into which the child enters”. Scaffolding is the procedure of transporting skills, where an adult helps a child to develop a new task and then progressively extracts their control as the child gradually masters the task. Through distribution cognition, we divide the information we have amongst people and external sources; for example, the information is not all situated in one single place.

Bruners study of learning acquisition led him on to present a discovery-orientated approach in schools, on the basis of his constructivism theory. These foundations promote learning as a method of assembling new ideas, based on past and present knowledge. Pupils are urged to explore the relationships and facts for themselves and continue to develop what they already know. The school curriculum is perfectly arranged in a whirl wind manner to assist the process, so that similar issues are redeveloped at subsequent age or level of understanding to continuously emphasise development.

Many critics said that the children might begin to relay on the assistance of the adult and therefore will be unable to proceed with a task without help. Others debated that the tasks given to the children may be to difficult for the child to understand without the

Hayley Thomson A5PL04

adults help so their standard of work may begin to fall when the adult withdraws their support.

All adults involved with education put this theory to use everyday as we are always trying to encourage children to carry out a task they have never done before. I have sat with children doing a jigsaw puzzle and I help the child by explaining that the flat edges go at the side for example and then leave the child to finish the puzzle alone.