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According to Jerome Bruner’s theory of discovery learning, people learn by discovering themselves the content of what they must learn before they can assimilate it into their cognitive structure. That is, students do not learn the content in its final form, which is usually offered by the teacher in the traditional method, but rather they must learn on their own in a fragmented and gradual way. in this Psychology-Online article: Jerome Bruner: biography and theory of discovery learningyou will be able to delve into the most relevant aspects of Jerome Bruner’s learning theory.
Jerome Bruner: biography
Jerome Seymour Bruner He was born in 1915 and died in 2016. He was born visually impaired, that is, blind, but was able to regain a small percentage of his sight after undergoing several cataract surgeries. Even after recovering part of his vision, it was very limited and that is why he had to wear glasses with very thick lenses that allowed him to strengthen his vision throughout his life.
Jerome Bruner was recognized American psychologist who focused on studying education and made great contributions to cognitive psychology and psychology, as well as to cognitive learning theories. Furthermore, Bruner not only worked as a psychologist, but also He was a writer and teacherteaching classes at different universities.
The research is also relevant to Bruner’s biography. He made a series of research on perception and learning simultaneously with behaviorist theories, a fact that led him to confront behaviorist authors, such as Skinner. After working on perception, he delved into the studies of cognition, stating that the mind is active and full of motives, instincts and purposes that allow us to understand reality in a comprehensive way and, on the contrary, the mind cannot be considered or passive nor as a machine of conditioned responses to specific stimuli.
Another aspect worth highlighting about Jerome Bruner’s biography is that in World War II he enlisted in the us army, participating in the War Psychology Division of the European Allied Force Barracks in France. During this stage of his life, his functions were directed toward military intelligence, for which reason, he investigated psychosocial phenomena that occurred as a consequence of the war, in order to be able to examine popular attitudes. When the war ended, he returned to his previous life, where he worked as a professor and researcher at the university.
Jerome Bruner: theory
In general, it is understood that to achieve an adequate teaching-learning process, it is ideal to encourage the participation of learners and not focus solely on the figure of the teacher. In this sense, from Bruner’s theory it is proposed that teachers promote the active participation of students in their learning, taking into account that it is a method of guided discovery, that is, interpreting the teacher as a guide who offers help to his students in their discovery, so that they build their own learning for themselves.
Thus, Jerome Bruner’s most recognized contribution to psychology is the so-called Learning by discovery.
Jerome Bruner and discovery learning
In the discovery learning of Bruner’s theory, the role of active participation of students in the learning process is considered essential, that is, that students have the opportunity to interact directly with reality and be the ones who learn what the teacher wants them to learn.
In order to achieve adequate discovery learning, it is necessary for the teacher to take the role of mediator and guide of the students in their discovery. Therefore, the teacher does not provide the learning content in its final form to the students, but must make known a learning goal and, in addition, direct and mediate the path to be followed by the learners until they, on their own, own foot, manage to achieve this goal. In other words, the teacher must explain to his students what final learning they must achieve and give them a series of necessary tools and guidelines to accompany them on their path.
According to Bruner’s theory, in order to learn any information meaningfully, one must have the personal experience of discovering it. Therefore, we understand that people’s participation in discovery fosters meaningful learning, a fact that is closely related to . Furthermore, it not only fosters significant knowledge, it also promotes research habits in people.
Within Jerome Bruner’s theory of discovery learning, we distinguish three types of discovery:
- Inductive discovery: This type of discovery is characterized by the collection and rearrangement of data carried out by the learner in order to reach a new category, concept or generalization.
- Deductive discovery: Deductive discovery involves the combination or relationship between general ideas. Its purpose is to reach specific statements, as if it were the construction of logical reasoning, in which we must start from the relationship or combination of different general ideas to reach a conclusion. For example, we start from the idea “all women are intelligent” and the idea “all scientists are women”, a fact that leads us to deduce that “all scientists are intelligent”.
- Transductive discovery: in this type of discovery the learner is able to relate and/or compare two particular elements and, in addition, point out that they are similar in one or two aspects.
Finally, it should be noted that Bruner’s theory states that teachers must adapt their methodological strategies to the individual evolution and rhythm and to the development of each student. A fact that allows us to establish a relationship with the proposal, also by Jerome Bruner, of the metaphor of scaffolding, which we will explain below.
Jerome Bruner and scaffolding
The scaffolding that Bruner talks about refers to a metaphor. In order to delve deeper into the meaning of this metaphor, we must first understand that the zone of proximal development (ZPD) of each learner is different and that this area is the distance between the actual development level (NDR) and the level of potential development (NDP). On the one hand, we understand the level of real development as everything that the learner is capable of doing on his own, that he knows how to do without the need for any type of help, that is, autonomously. On the other hand, we understand by level of potential development everything that the apprentice can achieve and knows how to do but with the help offered by another more expert person.
Therefore, in order to help an individual build significant knowledge and learning, we need to know their real level of development. In this way, as the individual advances on his path to achieving the final learning objective, he must be provided with adjusted and contingent aid to this knowledge, until the time comes to withdraw the aid and the student is able to use his knowledge autonomously, transforming it into his new level of real development. When the NDP becomes the student’s NDR, the zone of proximal development is modified and, therefore, the scaffolding begins again but, this time, in relation to the new learning challenge that it is proposed to achieve, and so on.
On the one hand, we understand adjusted aid as aid that is located in the zone of proximal development (which is the distance between the level of actual development and the level of potential development). On the other hand, when we talk about contingent aid, we are referring to aid that is offered and withdrawn. in the right momentin order not to cause the individual to develop a dependency on said aids.
Thus, aid must be offered precisely in the zone of proximal development, since if it is provided at a level lower than that of real development it would be unnecessary aid because the individual already functions autonomously in relation to said aid and, if provide such aid at a level higher than potential development, it would be aid aimed at an insurmountable challenge.
In this sense, Bruner’s scaffolding metaphor refer to a building (knowledge to be learned) that must be built with the help of a scaffold (adjusted and contingent aids), until the moment finally arrives when the building is already built and therefore does not require any scaffolding and stands upright autonomously.
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Bibliography
- Abarca, JC (2017). Jerome Seymour Bruner (1915-2016). Journal of Psychology, 35(2).
- Baro, A. (2011). Active methodologies and discovery learning. Innovation and Educational Experiences Magazine, (40), 1-11.