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The process of education
In this classic argument for curriculum reform in early education, Jerome Bruner shows that the basic concepts of science and the humanities can be grasped intuitively at a very early age. He argues persuasively that curricula should he designed to foster such early intuitions and then build on them in increasingly formal and abstract ways as education progresses.
Bruner's foundational case for the spiral curriculum has influenced a generation of educators and will continue to be a source of insight into the goals and methods of the educational process.
97 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 30, 1960
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About the author
Jerome Bruner
92 books82 followersJerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist predominately in the fields of developmental, educational, and legal psychology, and is one of the pioneers of the cognitive psychology movement in the United States. He is a senior research fellow at the New York University School of Law. He received his B.A. in 1937 from Duke University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1941. During World War II, Bruner served on the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force Europe committee under Eisenhower, researching social psychological phenomena.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 12, 2013
Pretty informative, some really interesting ideas, and still relevant today even though it was written 50 years ago.
It really is amazing how relevant these books written so long ago are to modern educational problems... It makes me think of how little we've progressed.
It really is amazing how relevant these books written so long ago are to modern educational problems... It makes me think of how little we've progressed.
October 1, 2019
Bruner is a treasure in the history of American education and educational theory. The Process of Education is an important, thought provoking little booklet that offers just as many, if not more, questions as answers.
August 1, 2021
Preface 1977
"Chomsky in his recent Reflections on Language speculates that there may be certain natural, even 'innate' ways of organizing knowledge, which are possibly more powerful in treating the realm of 'things' than in dealing with the domain of people and their acts and intentions." p.ix
"One starts somewhere-where the learner *is*. And one starts *whenever* the student arrives to begin his career as a learner. It was in this spirit that I proposed that 'any subject could be taught to any child at any age in some form that is honest.' " p.ix
"There is a vast amount of skilled activity required of a 'teacher' to get a learner to discover on his own-scaffolding the task in a way that assures that only those parts of the task within the child's reach are left unresolved, and knowing what elements of a solution the child will recognized though the cannon yet perform them." p.xiv
CHAPTER 1-Introduction
"It is interesting that around the turn of the last century the conception of the learning process as depicted by psychology gradually shifted away from an emphasis upon the production of general understanding to an emphasis on the acquisition of specific skills." p.5
"Virtually all of the evidence of the last two decades on the nature of learning and transfer has indicated that, while the original theory of formal discipline was poorly stated in terms of the training of faculties, it is indeed a fact that massive general transfer can be achieved by appropriate learning, even to the degree that learning properly under optimum conditions leads on to 'learn how to learn.'" "Interest in curricular problems at large has, in consequence, been rekindled among psychologists concerned with the learning process." p.6
"Whether the student knows the formal names of operations is less important for transfer than whether he is able to use them." [using EP to exemplify interdisciplinary nature of content areas (method+subject)] p.8
Theme 1: The role of structure in learning and how it may be made central in teaching.
"How can this exposure be made to count in their thinking for the rest of their lives?" p.11
"The teaching and learning of structure, rather than simply the mastery of facts and techniques, is at the center of the classic problem of transfer. There are many things that go into learning of this kind, not the least of which are supporting habits and skills that make possible the active use of the materials on has come to understand. If earlier learning is to render later learning easier, it must do so by providing a general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and later are made as clear as possible.
"Given the importance of this theme, much too little is known about how to teach fundamental structure effectively or how to provide learning conditions that foster it." p.12
Theme 2: The readiness for learning.
"Fourth-grade children can play absorbing games governed by the principles of topology and set theory, even discovering new 'moves' or theorems. They can grasp the idea of tragedy and the basic human plights represented in myth. But they cannot put these ideas into formal language or manipulate them as grownups can. There is much still to be learned about the 'spiral curriculum' that turns back on itself at higher levels."p.13
Theme 3: The nature of intuition.
"The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion-these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work, whatever his line of work. Can school children be led to master this gift?" [learning EP construction]
"The three themes mentioned so far are all premised on a central conviction: that intellectual activity anywhere is the same, whether at the frontier of knowledge or in a third-grade classroom...The difference in in degree, not in kind. The schoolboy learning physics is a physicist, and it is easier for him to learn physics behaving like a physicist than doing something else." p.14
Theme 4: The desire to learn and how it may be stimulated.
"Ideally, interest in the material to be learned is the best stimulus to learning, rather than external goals such as grades or later competitive advantage." p.14
CHAPTER 2-The Importance of Structure
"Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily."
We transfer training with application of learned skills, and we transfer principles and attitudes with application of general learned ideas.
"How to construct curricula that can be taught by ordinary teachers to ordinary students and that at the same time reflects clearly the basic or underlying principles of various fields if inquiry. The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school." p.18 [EP!!!]
"How do we tailor fundamental knowledge to the interests and capacities of children?" p.22
"It is the consensus of virtually all the men and women who have been working on curriculum projects that making material interesting is in no way incompatible with presenting it soundly; indeed, a correct general explanation is often the most interesting of all." p.23
*understanding fundamentals makes a subject more comprehensible
*understanding fundamentals helps memory: unless detail is placed into structured patterns, it is rapidly forgotten
*understanding fundamental principles ...is the main road to adequate 'transfer of training'
* The fourth claim for emphasis on structure and principles in teaching is that by constantly reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between 'advanced' and 'elementary' knowledge.
"The attitude that things are connected and not isolated is a case in point." p.27
"There is a continuity between what a scholar does on the forefront of his discipline and what a child does in approaching it for the first time." p.28
"What is more to the point is to ask what methods of exercise in any given field are most likely to give the student a sense of intelligent mastery over the material." p.30
"The curriculum of a subject should be determined by the most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of the underlying principles that give structure to a subject...
***The best way to create interest in a subject is to render it worth knowing, which means to make the knowledge gained usable in one's thinking beyond the situation in which the learning has occurred." p.31
CHAPTER 3-Readiness for Learning
"The process of intellectual development is the act of learning." p.33
A. Intellectual development.
"While the child is in the stage of concrete operations, he is capable of grasping intuitively and concretely a great many of the basic ideas of mathematics, the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. But he can do so only in terms of concrete operations.
"They will flounder, however, if on attempts to force upon them a formal mathematical description of what they have been doing.
"What is most important for teaching basic concepts is that the child be helped to pass progressively from concrete thinking to the utilization of more conceptually adequate modes of thought. But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on a logic that is distant from the child's manner of thinking." p.38
"Intellectual development of the child is no clockwork sequence of events; it responds to influences from the environment, notably the school environment." p.39
"It may be that nothing is intrinsically difficult. We just have to wait until the proper point of view and corresponding language for presenting it are revealed...One leads the child by the well-wrought 'medium questions' to move more rapidly through the stages of intellectual development, to a deeper understanding of mathematical, physical, and historical principles. We must know far more about the ways in which this can be done." p.40 ************
B. The act of learning.
1. acquisition: refinement of previous knowledge
2. transformation: the way we deal with information in order to go beyond it
3. evaluation: checking whether the way we have manipulated information is adequate to the task
"If it is our intention as teacher to inure the child to longer and longer episodes of learning, it may well be that intrinsic rewards in the form of quickened awareness and understanding will have to be emphasized far more in the detailed design of curricula. On of the least discussed ways of carrying a student through a hard unit of material is to challenge him with a chance to exercise his full powers, so that he may discover the pleasure of full and effective functioning." p.50
C. The spiral curriculum.
"If one respects the ways of thought of the growing child, if one is courteous enough to translate material into his logical forms and challenging enough to tempt him to advance, then it is possible to introduce him at an early age to the ideas and styles that in later life make an educated man. We might ask, as a criterion for any subject taught in primary school, whether, when fully developed, it is worth an adult's knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. If the answer to both questions is negative or ambiguous, then the material is cluttering the curriculum." p.52
CHAPTER 4-Intuitive and Analytic Thinking
"A careful examination of the nature of intuitive thinking might be of great aid to those charged with curriculum construction and teaching." p.55
"Little systematic knowledge is available about the nature of intuitive thinking or the variables that influence it. What seems most appropriate at this point, therefore, is an attempt to outline the kinds of research which, if even only partially carried out, would begin to provide information useful to those concerned with the improvement of particular course or, more generally, of the curriculum as a whole. What kinds of questions do we need the answers to?" p.57
"The intuitive thinker may even invent or discover problems that the analyst would not. But it may be the analyst who gives these problems the proper formalism." p.58
"For a working definition of intuition, we do well to begin with Webster: 'immediate apprehension or cognition.' p.60 [without 'media']
"Individuals who have extensive familiarity with a subject appear more often to leap intuitively into a decision or to a solution of a problem-one which later proves to be appropriate." p.62
"It seems likely that effective intuitive thinking is fostered by the development of self-confidence and courage in the student. A person who thinks intuitively may often achieve correct solutions, but he may also be proved wrong when he checks or when others check on him. Such thinking, therefore, requires a willingness to make honest mistakes in the effort to solve problems." p.65 [trust+GM]
"The idea of rewards and punishments as seen by pupils in school actually tends to inhibit the use of intuitive thinking...what would happen to the development of intuitive thinking if different bases for grading were employed." p.66
"It becomes more important to nurture confident intuition in the realm of literature and the arts. Yet one finds a virtual vacuum of research on this topic in educational literature." p.67
"It requires a sensitive teacher to distinguish an intuitive mistake-an interestingly wrong leap-from a stupid or ignorant mistake, and it requires a teacher who can give approval and correction simultaneously to the intuitive student...
"Along with any program for developing methods of cultivating and measuring the occurrence of intuitive thinking, there must go some practical consideration of the classroom problems and the limitations on our capacity for encouraging such skills in our students." p.68
CHAPTER 5-Motives for Learning
"The quest is to devise materials that will challenge the superior student while not destroying the confidence and will-to-learn of those who are less fortunate. We have no illusions about the difficulty of such a course, yet it is the only one open to us if we are to pursue excellence and at the same time honor the diversity of talents we must educate." p.70
"Perhaps it is in the technique of arousing attention in school that first steps can be taken to establish that active autonomy of attention that is the antithesis of the spectator's passivity." P.72 [EP!]
"What this amounts to is developing in the child an interest in what he is learning, and with it an appropriate set of attitudes and values about intellectual activity generally." p.73
"Modes for learning must be kept from going passive in an age of spectatorship, they must be based as much as possible upon the arousal of interest in what there is to be learned, and they must be kept broad and diverse in expression." p.80
CHAPTER 6-Aids to Teaching
A. Devices for various experience.
B. Helping the student grasp the underlying structure of a phenomenon. [EP as a model of cognition.]
C. Dramatic devices.
D. Automatizing devices.
"A teacher who will not or cannot give play to his own intuitiveness is not likely to be effective in encouraging intuition in his students. To be so insecure that he dares not be caught in a mistake does not make a teacher likely model of daring. If the teacher will not risk a shaky hypothesis, why should the student?
The effect would be to free the teacher for teaching and study. If the teacher is also learning, teaching takes on a new quality." p.90
"Chomsky in his recent Reflections on Language speculates that there may be certain natural, even 'innate' ways of organizing knowledge, which are possibly more powerful in treating the realm of 'things' than in dealing with the domain of people and their acts and intentions." p.ix
"One starts somewhere-where the learner *is*. And one starts *whenever* the student arrives to begin his career as a learner. It was in this spirit that I proposed that 'any subject could be taught to any child at any age in some form that is honest.' " p.ix
"There is a vast amount of skilled activity required of a 'teacher' to get a learner to discover on his own-scaffolding the task in a way that assures that only those parts of the task within the child's reach are left unresolved, and knowing what elements of a solution the child will recognized though the cannon yet perform them." p.xiv
CHAPTER 1-Introduction
"It is interesting that around the turn of the last century the conception of the learning process as depicted by psychology gradually shifted away from an emphasis upon the production of general understanding to an emphasis on the acquisition of specific skills." p.5
"Virtually all of the evidence of the last two decades on the nature of learning and transfer has indicated that, while the original theory of formal discipline was poorly stated in terms of the training of faculties, it is indeed a fact that massive general transfer can be achieved by appropriate learning, even to the degree that learning properly under optimum conditions leads on to 'learn how to learn.'" "Interest in curricular problems at large has, in consequence, been rekindled among psychologists concerned with the learning process." p.6
"Whether the student knows the formal names of operations is less important for transfer than whether he is able to use them." [using EP to exemplify interdisciplinary nature of content areas (method+subject)] p.8
Theme 1: The role of structure in learning and how it may be made central in teaching.
"How can this exposure be made to count in their thinking for the rest of their lives?" p.11
"The teaching and learning of structure, rather than simply the mastery of facts and techniques, is at the center of the classic problem of transfer. There are many things that go into learning of this kind, not the least of which are supporting habits and skills that make possible the active use of the materials on has come to understand. If earlier learning is to render later learning easier, it must do so by providing a general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and later are made as clear as possible.
"Given the importance of this theme, much too little is known about how to teach fundamental structure effectively or how to provide learning conditions that foster it." p.12
Theme 2: The readiness for learning.
"Fourth-grade children can play absorbing games governed by the principles of topology and set theory, even discovering new 'moves' or theorems. They can grasp the idea of tragedy and the basic human plights represented in myth. But they cannot put these ideas into formal language or manipulate them as grownups can. There is much still to be learned about the 'spiral curriculum' that turns back on itself at higher levels."p.13
Theme 3: The nature of intuition.
"The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion-these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work, whatever his line of work. Can school children be led to master this gift?" [learning EP construction]
"The three themes mentioned so far are all premised on a central conviction: that intellectual activity anywhere is the same, whether at the frontier of knowledge or in a third-grade classroom...The difference in in degree, not in kind. The schoolboy learning physics is a physicist, and it is easier for him to learn physics behaving like a physicist than doing something else." p.14
Theme 4: The desire to learn and how it may be stimulated.
"Ideally, interest in the material to be learned is the best stimulus to learning, rather than external goals such as grades or later competitive advantage." p.14
CHAPTER 2-The Importance of Structure
"Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily."
We transfer training with application of learned skills, and we transfer principles and attitudes with application of general learned ideas.
"How to construct curricula that can be taught by ordinary teachers to ordinary students and that at the same time reflects clearly the basic or underlying principles of various fields if inquiry. The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school." p.18 [EP!!!]
"How do we tailor fundamental knowledge to the interests and capacities of children?" p.22
"It is the consensus of virtually all the men and women who have been working on curriculum projects that making material interesting is in no way incompatible with presenting it soundly; indeed, a correct general explanation is often the most interesting of all." p.23
*understanding fundamentals makes a subject more comprehensible
*understanding fundamentals helps memory: unless detail is placed into structured patterns, it is rapidly forgotten
*understanding fundamental principles ...is the main road to adequate 'transfer of training'
* The fourth claim for emphasis on structure and principles in teaching is that by constantly reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between 'advanced' and 'elementary' knowledge.
"The attitude that things are connected and not isolated is a case in point." p.27
"There is a continuity between what a scholar does on the forefront of his discipline and what a child does in approaching it for the first time." p.28
"What is more to the point is to ask what methods of exercise in any given field are most likely to give the student a sense of intelligent mastery over the material." p.30
"The curriculum of a subject should be determined by the most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of the underlying principles that give structure to a subject...
***The best way to create interest in a subject is to render it worth knowing, which means to make the knowledge gained usable in one's thinking beyond the situation in which the learning has occurred." p.31
CHAPTER 3-Readiness for Learning
"The process of intellectual development is the act of learning." p.33
A. Intellectual development.
"While the child is in the stage of concrete operations, he is capable of grasping intuitively and concretely a great many of the basic ideas of mathematics, the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. But he can do so only in terms of concrete operations.
"They will flounder, however, if on attempts to force upon them a formal mathematical description of what they have been doing.
"What is most important for teaching basic concepts is that the child be helped to pass progressively from concrete thinking to the utilization of more conceptually adequate modes of thought. But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on a logic that is distant from the child's manner of thinking." p.38
"Intellectual development of the child is no clockwork sequence of events; it responds to influences from the environment, notably the school environment." p.39
"It may be that nothing is intrinsically difficult. We just have to wait until the proper point of view and corresponding language for presenting it are revealed...One leads the child by the well-wrought 'medium questions' to move more rapidly through the stages of intellectual development, to a deeper understanding of mathematical, physical, and historical principles. We must know far more about the ways in which this can be done." p.40 ************
B. The act of learning.
1. acquisition: refinement of previous knowledge
2. transformation: the way we deal with information in order to go beyond it
3. evaluation: checking whether the way we have manipulated information is adequate to the task
"If it is our intention as teacher to inure the child to longer and longer episodes of learning, it may well be that intrinsic rewards in the form of quickened awareness and understanding will have to be emphasized far more in the detailed design of curricula. On of the least discussed ways of carrying a student through a hard unit of material is to challenge him with a chance to exercise his full powers, so that he may discover the pleasure of full and effective functioning." p.50
C. The spiral curriculum.
"If one respects the ways of thought of the growing child, if one is courteous enough to translate material into his logical forms and challenging enough to tempt him to advance, then it is possible to introduce him at an early age to the ideas and styles that in later life make an educated man. We might ask, as a criterion for any subject taught in primary school, whether, when fully developed, it is worth an adult's knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. If the answer to both questions is negative or ambiguous, then the material is cluttering the curriculum." p.52
CHAPTER 4-Intuitive and Analytic Thinking
"A careful examination of the nature of intuitive thinking might be of great aid to those charged with curriculum construction and teaching." p.55
"Little systematic knowledge is available about the nature of intuitive thinking or the variables that influence it. What seems most appropriate at this point, therefore, is an attempt to outline the kinds of research which, if even only partially carried out, would begin to provide information useful to those concerned with the improvement of particular course or, more generally, of the curriculum as a whole. What kinds of questions do we need the answers to?" p.57
"The intuitive thinker may even invent or discover problems that the analyst would not. But it may be the analyst who gives these problems the proper formalism." p.58
"For a working definition of intuition, we do well to begin with Webster: 'immediate apprehension or cognition.' p.60 [without 'media']
"Individuals who have extensive familiarity with a subject appear more often to leap intuitively into a decision or to a solution of a problem-one which later proves to be appropriate." p.62
"It seems likely that effective intuitive thinking is fostered by the development of self-confidence and courage in the student. A person who thinks intuitively may often achieve correct solutions, but he may also be proved wrong when he checks or when others check on him. Such thinking, therefore, requires a willingness to make honest mistakes in the effort to solve problems." p.65 [trust+GM]
"The idea of rewards and punishments as seen by pupils in school actually tends to inhibit the use of intuitive thinking...what would happen to the development of intuitive thinking if different bases for grading were employed." p.66
"It becomes more important to nurture confident intuition in the realm of literature and the arts. Yet one finds a virtual vacuum of research on this topic in educational literature." p.67
"It requires a sensitive teacher to distinguish an intuitive mistake-an interestingly wrong leap-from a stupid or ignorant mistake, and it requires a teacher who can give approval and correction simultaneously to the intuitive student...
"Along with any program for developing methods of cultivating and measuring the occurrence of intuitive thinking, there must go some practical consideration of the classroom problems and the limitations on our capacity for encouraging such skills in our students." p.68
CHAPTER 5-Motives for Learning
"The quest is to devise materials that will challenge the superior student while not destroying the confidence and will-to-learn of those who are less fortunate. We have no illusions about the difficulty of such a course, yet it is the only one open to us if we are to pursue excellence and at the same time honor the diversity of talents we must educate." p.70
"Perhaps it is in the technique of arousing attention in school that first steps can be taken to establish that active autonomy of attention that is the antithesis of the spectator's passivity." P.72 [EP!]
"What this amounts to is developing in the child an interest in what he is learning, and with it an appropriate set of attitudes and values about intellectual activity generally." p.73
"Modes for learning must be kept from going passive in an age of spectatorship, they must be based as much as possible upon the arousal of interest in what there is to be learned, and they must be kept broad and diverse in expression." p.80
CHAPTER 6-Aids to Teaching
A. Devices for various experience.
B. Helping the student grasp the underlying structure of a phenomenon. [EP as a model of cognition.]
C. Dramatic devices.
D. Automatizing devices.
"A teacher who will not or cannot give play to his own intuitiveness is not likely to be effective in encouraging intuition in his students. To be so insecure that he dares not be caught in a mistake does not make a teacher likely model of daring. If the teacher will not risk a shaky hypothesis, why should the student?
The effect would be to free the teacher for teaching and study. If the teacher is also learning, teaching takes on a new quality." p.90
July 6, 2012
This little book is one of the clearest elucidations of what curriculum is all about that I've ever read. Excellent. I borrowed it from the library, but will be adding a copy to my teaching library.
September 4, 2023
This EdD reading list might just kill me 🥴
June 11, 2016
(k:Bruner) 370.11 BRU
Back Cover review:
...Jerome Bruner shows that the basic concepts of science and humanities can be grasped intuitively at a very early age.... should be designed to foster such early intuition and then build on them in increasingly formal and abstract ways as education to be progress. Bruner's foundational case for the spiral curriculum has influenced a generation of educations...
Ranks as one of the most important and influential works on education. (Fortune)
Search by : Conception of Learning, Conception of knowledge
Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept attainment, and concept formation, is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner. Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin (1967), Ref: Finnish Lessons.
Books mentioned:
Toward a Theory of Instruction by Jerome Bruner (How to apply theory of "Process of Education".
The Relevance of Educationby Jerome Bruner.
Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing
Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom: Selections from Great Documents
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain by by Benjamin S. Bloom
Fantasy and Feeling in Education by Richard Matthew Jones
Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky
How to Do Things with Words by John Austin
Productive Thinking by Wertheimer, Max (classic book)
Geometry and the Imagination by David Hilbert (German Mathematician, great book)
Piaget, Chomsky, Levi-Strauss: a profound effect on author.
Man: A Course of Study, usually known by the acronym MACOS or M.A.C.O.S., was an American humanities teaching program, popular in America and Britain in the 1970s. It was based upon the theories of Jerome Bruner, particularly his concept of the "spiral curriculum"
School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG)
Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC)
Biological Sciences Curriculum Study
The University of Illinois Arithmetic Project,created in 1958, directed by Professor David A. Page (one of most experience teacher in elementary math.)
Educational Testing Service
Dualism: usefulness vs. ornamental.
Usefulness: as Benjamin Franklin refer as 1. Skills of a specific kind 2. General understanding P4
P16: Four themes and one conjecture:How best to aid the teacher in the task of instruction.
Chap 2: The important of structure
Chap 3: The readiness of learning
Chap 4: Intuitive and analytic thinking
Chap 5: Motives for learning
Chap 6: Aids to teaching
p13 ... But they(children) cannot put these ideas into formal language or manipulate them as grown-ups can.
Chap 2
p22 How do we tailor fundamental knowledge to the interests and capacities of children?... It requires a combination of deep understanding and patient honesty ... in a way that is simultaneously exciting, correct, and rewardingly comprehensible.... We fond much patient honest ... that has come to naught because authors did not have a deep enough understanding.
P27 Any working scientist is usually able to say something about the way of thinking or attitudes that are a part of craft.
P29 One hears often the distinction between "doing" and "understanding"...a sharp line drawn between "rote drill" and "understanding",... or learn by rote.
p38 But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on a logic that is distant from the children's manner of thinking.... Much teaching of mathematics is of this sort. The child learns not to understanding mathematical order but rather to apply certain device or recipes without understanding their significance and connectedness....Given this inappropriate start, he is easily led to believe that the important thing is for him to be "accurate"- though accuracy has less to do with mathematics than with computation.
Chap 3
p43 So too with the teaching of physics, which has much in it that can be profitably taught at an inductive or intuitive level much earlier. Basic notions in these field are perfectly accessible to children of seven to ten years of ages, provided that they are divorced from their mathematical expression and studied through materials that the child can handle itself. My comment: this is exactly the same as what I figure out how to teach children, I even go further, children have enough mental ability to be self-taught.
p45 In such game, children first discover an entirely qualitative notion of chance defined as an uncertain event, contrasted with deductive certainty. The notion of probability as a fraction of certainty is discovered only later.
...Interesting in problems of probabilistic nature could easily be awakened and developed before the introduction of any statistical processes or computation. Statistical manipulation and computation are only tools to be used after intuitive understanding has been established. If the array of computational paraphernalia is introduced first, then more likely than not it will inhibit or kill the development of probabilistic reasoning.
One wonders in the light of all this whether it might not be interesting to devote the first two years of school to a series of exercises in manipulating, classifying and or... My comment: need to be done until high school.
Chap 4
P55 inarticulate genius (by his operations and conclusion,reveals a deep grasp of a substance but has not much ability to "say how it goes") vs. articulate idiocy (is full of seeming appropriate words but has no matching ability to use the ideas for which the words presumably stand.
Mathematician, physicists, ... stress the value of intuitive thinking in their respective areas. In mathematics, for example, intuition is used with two rather different meanings. On the one hand, an individual is said to think intuitively when, have worked for a long time on a problem, he rather suddenly achieves the solution, one for which he has yet to provide a formal proof. On the other hand, an individual is said to be a good intuitive mathematician if, when others come to him with questions, he can make quickly very good guesses whether something is so, or which of several approaches to a problem will prove fruitful.
Intellectual development in the child: according to Piaget and others
1.Preschool up to 5-6 years old
2.stage of concrete operations.
3.formal operations (by Geneva school)
The acting of learning 3 process p48
1.Acquisition of knowledge.
2.transformation
3.evaluation.
Secondary education: junior high school or middle school, begin with 6th or 7th (age 11 or 12)
Junior high school 7th - 9th grade.
high school, 9th grade (age 14) 12th grade (age 18).
James Samuel Coleman
David Riesman P71 (commentator of american secondary school social setting)
Chap 6 Aids to teaching
1. Model devices (mathematical block to academic type programs (one type is self-contained, entertaining,PBS nova , another entire substance of a course, like great courses, )
2. Dramatizing devices.
3.automatizing devices. (like modern-day computer-based programs)
My Review:
1. A lot of theories match to my observation of my child mental development, and basic the same to my own education theory. Try to address what to teach, when to teach, how to teach. Very theoretical approach.
2. Too complicated. The author does not realized the children do not need be taught. They can learn by themselves. The trouble in today education is not "children can not learning", but learn something not appropriate to brain capacity, e.g Arithmetic in K-5, 100% guarantee failure, Children train to by rote, not by understanding, the basic structure are far deep, and could not easily by children by such young age. Just as it is definitely failure to teach baby to walk before 1 year old.
3. Not have a enough experience as a teacher to experience common phenomenon. "I teach, but they do not learn" as in John Halt's book, and try to solve its mystery.
Back Cover review:
...Jerome Bruner shows that the basic concepts of science and humanities can be grasped intuitively at a very early age.... should be designed to foster such early intuition and then build on them in increasingly formal and abstract ways as education to be progress. Bruner's foundational case for the spiral curriculum has influenced a generation of educations...
Ranks as one of the most important and influential works on education. (Fortune)
Search by : Conception of Learning, Conception of knowledge
Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept attainment, and concept formation, is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner. Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin (1967), Ref: Finnish Lessons.
Books mentioned:
Toward a Theory of Instruction by Jerome Bruner (How to apply theory of "Process of Education".
The Relevance of Educationby Jerome Bruner.
Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing
Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom: Selections from Great Documents
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain by by Benjamin S. Bloom
Fantasy and Feeling in Education by Richard Matthew Jones
Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky
How to Do Things with Words by John Austin
Productive Thinking by Wertheimer, Max (classic book)
Geometry and the Imagination by David Hilbert (German Mathematician, great book)
Piaget, Chomsky, Levi-Strauss: a profound effect on author.
Man: A Course of Study, usually known by the acronym MACOS or M.A.C.O.S., was an American humanities teaching program, popular in America and Britain in the 1970s. It was based upon the theories of Jerome Bruner, particularly his concept of the "spiral curriculum"
School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG)
Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC)
Biological Sciences Curriculum Study
The University of Illinois Arithmetic Project,created in 1958, directed by Professor David A. Page (one of most experience teacher in elementary math.)
Educational Testing Service
Dualism: usefulness vs. ornamental.
Usefulness: as Benjamin Franklin refer as 1. Skills of a specific kind 2. General understanding P4
P16: Four themes and one conjecture:How best to aid the teacher in the task of instruction.
Chap 2: The important of structure
Chap 3: The readiness of learning
Chap 4: Intuitive and analytic thinking
Chap 5: Motives for learning
Chap 6: Aids to teaching
p13 ... But they(children) cannot put these ideas into formal language or manipulate them as grown-ups can.
Chap 2
p22 How do we tailor fundamental knowledge to the interests and capacities of children?... It requires a combination of deep understanding and patient honesty ... in a way that is simultaneously exciting, correct, and rewardingly comprehensible.... We fond much patient honest ... that has come to naught because authors did not have a deep enough understanding.
P27 Any working scientist is usually able to say something about the way of thinking or attitudes that are a part of craft.
P29 One hears often the distinction between "doing" and "understanding"...a sharp line drawn between "rote drill" and "understanding",... or learn by rote.
p38 But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on a logic that is distant from the children's manner of thinking.... Much teaching of mathematics is of this sort. The child learns not to understanding mathematical order but rather to apply certain device or recipes without understanding their significance and connectedness....Given this inappropriate start, he is easily led to believe that the important thing is for him to be "accurate"- though accuracy has less to do with mathematics than with computation.
Chap 3
p43 So too with the teaching of physics, which has much in it that can be profitably taught at an inductive or intuitive level much earlier. Basic notions in these field are perfectly accessible to children of seven to ten years of ages, provided that they are divorced from their mathematical expression and studied through materials that the child can handle itself. My comment: this is exactly the same as what I figure out how to teach children, I even go further, children have enough mental ability to be self-taught.
p45 In such game, children first discover an entirely qualitative notion of chance defined as an uncertain event, contrasted with deductive certainty. The notion of probability as a fraction of certainty is discovered only later.
...Interesting in problems of probabilistic nature could easily be awakened and developed before the introduction of any statistical processes or computation. Statistical manipulation and computation are only tools to be used after intuitive understanding has been established. If the array of computational paraphernalia is introduced first, then more likely than not it will inhibit or kill the development of probabilistic reasoning.
One wonders in the light of all this whether it might not be interesting to devote the first two years of school to a series of exercises in manipulating, classifying and or... My comment: need to be done until high school.
Chap 4
P55 inarticulate genius (by his operations and conclusion,reveals a deep grasp of a substance but has not much ability to "say how it goes") vs. articulate idiocy (is full of seeming appropriate words but has no matching ability to use the ideas for which the words presumably stand.
Mathematician, physicists, ... stress the value of intuitive thinking in their respective areas. In mathematics, for example, intuition is used with two rather different meanings. On the one hand, an individual is said to think intuitively when, have worked for a long time on a problem, he rather suddenly achieves the solution, one for which he has yet to provide a formal proof. On the other hand, an individual is said to be a good intuitive mathematician if, when others come to him with questions, he can make quickly very good guesses whether something is so, or which of several approaches to a problem will prove fruitful.
Intellectual development in the child: according to Piaget and others
1.Preschool up to 5-6 years old
2.stage of concrete operations.
3.formal operations (by Geneva school)
The acting of learning 3 process p48
1.Acquisition of knowledge.
2.transformation
3.evaluation.
Secondary education: junior high school or middle school, begin with 6th or 7th (age 11 or 12)
Junior high school 7th - 9th grade.
high school, 9th grade (age 14) 12th grade (age 18).
James Samuel Coleman
David Riesman P71 (commentator of american secondary school social setting)
Chap 6 Aids to teaching
1. Model devices (mathematical block to academic type programs (one type is self-contained, entertaining,PBS nova , another entire substance of a course, like great courses, )
2. Dramatizing devices.
3.automatizing devices. (like modern-day computer-based programs)
My Review:
1. A lot of theories match to my observation of my child mental development, and basic the same to my own education theory. Try to address what to teach, when to teach, how to teach. Very theoretical approach.
2. Too complicated. The author does not realized the children do not need be taught. They can learn by themselves. The trouble in today education is not "children can not learning", but learn something not appropriate to brain capacity, e.g Arithmetic in K-5, 100% guarantee failure, Children train to by rote, not by understanding, the basic structure are far deep, and could not easily by children by such young age. Just as it is definitely failure to teach baby to walk before 1 year old.
3. Not have a enough experience as a teacher to experience common phenomenon. "I teach, but they do not learn" as in John Halt's book, and try to solve its mystery.
November 10, 2013
The text is unbelievably in tune with the educational world it fore-shadows by 40 years. It not only outlines many of the concerns we are going through as we articulate the curriculum at UWCSEA, but also identifies quite nuanced points about how these ideas play out.
Some quotes below are considered:
Chapter 1: introduction
"The main objective of this work has been to present subject matter effectively-that is, with due regard not only for coverage but also the structure."
This is the foundation of our approach that all disciplines have within fundamental structures in the way that they understand the world. It starts here. The text also had a strong influence on the International baccalaureate.
"Whereas the early emphasis have led to research studies on the transfer of formal discipline-the value obtained from training of such faculties as analysis, judgement, memory, and so forth-later work tended to explore the transfer of identical elements or specific skills.… These studies have stimulated a renewed interest in complex learning of a kind that one finds in schools, learning designed to produce general understanding of the structure of the subject matter." 6
Bruner describes these transferable understandings or features of knowledge as"tropisms". To us they are essential understandings or standards.
"The three fundamentals involved in working with equations are commutation, distribution, and dissociation. Once a student grasps the ideas embodied by these three fundamental he is in a position to recognise somewhere in new equations to be solved are not new at all, but variants upon a familiar theme. Whether the students knows the formal names of these operations is less important to the transfer and whether he is able to use them."8
"Good teaching that emphasises the structure of the subject is probably even more valuable for less able students than 51, it is the former rather than the latter who is most easily thrown off the track by poor teaching"
"Ideally schools should allow students to go ahead in different subject as rapidly as they can. The administrative problems raised when one makes such an arrangement are almost invariably beyond the resources schools have available for dealing with them. The answer will probably lie in some modification or abolition of the system of greater levels in from subject, notably mathematics, along with the program of course enrichment in other subjects."
"If earlier learning as to render later learning easier it must do so by providing a general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and later I made it clear as possible"12
"The early teaching of science, mathematics, social studies and literature should be defined to teach the subject with scrupulous intellectual honesty, but with an emphasis upon the intuitive grasp of ideas"
Chapter 2: the importance of structure
"The first object of any active learning over and beyond the pleasure it may give is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere that should allow us later to go further more easily.
"The attitude that things are connected and not isolated is a case in point. One can imagine a kindergarten game is designed to make children more actively alert to how things effect or are connected with each other-a kind of introduction to the idea of multiple determination of events in the physical and social world"
"To recapitulate, the main theme of this chapter has been that the curriculum of the subject should be determined by the most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of the underlying principles that gives structure to that subject"
The best way to create interest in the subject is to render it worth knowing, which means to make the knowledge gained usable in once thinking beyond the situation in which the learning has occurred"
Chapter 3: readiness for learning
"We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectual honesty form to any child at any stage of development." 33
What is most important teaching basic concepts is that the child can be helped to past progressively from concrete thinking to the utilisation of more conceptually adequate modes of thought. But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on logic that is distant from the child's manner of thinking and sterile in its implications for him. Most teaching in mathematics is of this sort. The child learns not understand mathematical order but rather to apply certain devices or recipes without understanding their significance and connectedness. They are not translated into his way of thinking. Given this inappropriate start he is easily led to believe that the important thing is for him to be "accurate"-though accuracy has less to do with mathematics and computation."
"Curriculum ought to be built around the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members." 52
Chapter 4: intuitive and analytical thinking.
"Much is been said in the preceding chapters about the importance of the students intuitive, in contrast to his formal, understanding of the subject encounters. The emphasis in much of school learning and student examiner is a upon explicit formulations, upon the ability of the student to reproduce verbal or numerical formulation. It is not clear, in the absence of research, whether this emphasis is in the medical to the later development of good intuitive understanding-indeed it is even I'm clear what constitutes intuitive understanding. Yet we can distinguish between inarticulate genius and articulate idiocy."
Some quotes below are considered:
Chapter 1: introduction
"The main objective of this work has been to present subject matter effectively-that is, with due regard not only for coverage but also the structure."
This is the foundation of our approach that all disciplines have within fundamental structures in the way that they understand the world. It starts here. The text also had a strong influence on the International baccalaureate.
"Whereas the early emphasis have led to research studies on the transfer of formal discipline-the value obtained from training of such faculties as analysis, judgement, memory, and so forth-later work tended to explore the transfer of identical elements or specific skills.… These studies have stimulated a renewed interest in complex learning of a kind that one finds in schools, learning designed to produce general understanding of the structure of the subject matter." 6
Bruner describes these transferable understandings or features of knowledge as"tropisms". To us they are essential understandings or standards.
"The three fundamentals involved in working with equations are commutation, distribution, and dissociation. Once a student grasps the ideas embodied by these three fundamental he is in a position to recognise somewhere in new equations to be solved are not new at all, but variants upon a familiar theme. Whether the students knows the formal names of these operations is less important to the transfer and whether he is able to use them."8
"Good teaching that emphasises the structure of the subject is probably even more valuable for less able students than 51, it is the former rather than the latter who is most easily thrown off the track by poor teaching"
"Ideally schools should allow students to go ahead in different subject as rapidly as they can. The administrative problems raised when one makes such an arrangement are almost invariably beyond the resources schools have available for dealing with them. The answer will probably lie in some modification or abolition of the system of greater levels in from subject, notably mathematics, along with the program of course enrichment in other subjects."
"If earlier learning as to render later learning easier it must do so by providing a general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and later I made it clear as possible"12
"The early teaching of science, mathematics, social studies and literature should be defined to teach the subject with scrupulous intellectual honesty, but with an emphasis upon the intuitive grasp of ideas"
Chapter 2: the importance of structure
"The first object of any active learning over and beyond the pleasure it may give is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere that should allow us later to go further more easily.
"The attitude that things are connected and not isolated is a case in point. One can imagine a kindergarten game is designed to make children more actively alert to how things effect or are connected with each other-a kind of introduction to the idea of multiple determination of events in the physical and social world"
"To recapitulate, the main theme of this chapter has been that the curriculum of the subject should be determined by the most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of the underlying principles that gives structure to that subject"
The best way to create interest in the subject is to render it worth knowing, which means to make the knowledge gained usable in once thinking beyond the situation in which the learning has occurred"
Chapter 3: readiness for learning
"We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectual honesty form to any child at any stage of development." 33
What is most important teaching basic concepts is that the child can be helped to past progressively from concrete thinking to the utilisation of more conceptually adequate modes of thought. But it is futile to attempt this by presenting formal explanations based on logic that is distant from the child's manner of thinking and sterile in its implications for him. Most teaching in mathematics is of this sort. The child learns not understand mathematical order but rather to apply certain devices or recipes without understanding their significance and connectedness. They are not translated into his way of thinking. Given this inappropriate start he is easily led to believe that the important thing is for him to be "accurate"-though accuracy has less to do with mathematics and computation."
"Curriculum ought to be built around the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members." 52
Chapter 4: intuitive and analytical thinking.
"Much is been said in the preceding chapters about the importance of the students intuitive, in contrast to his formal, understanding of the subject encounters. The emphasis in much of school learning and student examiner is a upon explicit formulations, upon the ability of the student to reproduce verbal or numerical formulation. It is not clear, in the absence of research, whether this emphasis is in the medical to the later development of good intuitive understanding-indeed it is even I'm clear what constitutes intuitive understanding. Yet we can distinguish between inarticulate genius and articulate idiocy."
July 11, 2018
Despite approaching education backwards from how I approach it (deductively rather than inductively), I enjoyed Bruner's thoughts. He describes how we can remember ideas better if they are inserted into a general structure and advocated for the development of intuitive as well as analytic judgment. He also, apparently, is the originator of the spiraling curriculum, feeling that any subject can be taught to any age level as long as the appropriate language and ideas are used. I don't know how I haven't been exposed to this seminal thinker until this late in my education career!
July 19, 2022
Matthew Lipman's philosophy for children operationalized many of Bruner's ideas, including a spiral curriculum, dramatizing devices, the teacher as model, and that any subject can be taught to children.
January 19, 2022
This book is short and excellent. Bruner shows what we knew in 1960 and as a profession we have ignored this set of knowledge to our own and our students' detriment.
October 3, 2024
Read for school. Was fine. I did like how he said (in 1960!) that we should be focused on raising the prestige and salary of the teaching profession. 🤷♂️ Maybe we'll try that someday.....
May 10, 2025
Fascinating to see how many of today’s education conversations are in facts decades if not centuries old.
July 14, 2012
This book is dated--or, at least, you might look at its publication date and imagine it to be too far out of date to be relevant in the 2012 ecology or e-learning and instructional design. I'm here to say that if you fell into that initial assessment of this book and its theories, you'd be wrong. Sure, some of the terminology is out of date, but I found virtually every aspect of this book to be widely applicable to today's landscape. I was particularly intrigued by (and inspired to further research) his theories on intuitive learning and how best to facilitate the development of intuitive skills in students. In addition, his chapter on teacher's aides directly applies to e-learning in the modern era! He suggests that teachers tend to gravitate to tools for the sake of the tool rather than for a directly applicable use of that tool in facilitating transfer of learning. In other words, as teachers, we tend to say, "Oh, look at that shiny new tool! Let's figure out how to use it in class!" when we should be saying, "What am I trying to teach my students and what tools will help me facilitate that learning?" That same question applies to e-learning. Very impressed with Bruner. :)
February 27, 2013
A good conversation starter. Bruner and other concerned intellectuals got together in the late 50s, early 60s and mapped out some areas that teachers and other curriculum creators might want to look at in order to boost our children's learning. Though it seems that many of their ideas have been ignored in favor of corporate agendas, they are still relevant and pursued by alternative educators today.
August 24, 2016
The book is a bit dated, but the content and challenges for schools and education are the same. The challenge for schools still remain, how do they at scale, implement all the knowledge that has been gained from research on children and how they learn. There is a great chasm between what we know and what actually happens within the classroom. In my opinion, the problem still remains the all encompassing institution of school itself.
July 24, 2015
Short simple read that expounds sound principles for developing classroom curriculum. Although he does not expand on the spiral model extensively in this book, the conceptual framework is intuitive and persuasive for developing curriculum for all grade levels (particularly though for elementary).
October 21, 2013
Timeless educational classic. Bruner discusses the role of structure in learning (schema and the like), readiness for learning, intuition, and the desire to learn. His insights resonate with most educators, and they are simple and relevant, even today (book was written in the early 60's)
August 12, 2009
Dense, but very useful to anyone who wants to pursue a career in education.
May 24, 2011
Discovered at After-Words bookstore in downtown Chicago. $9.00.
I am devouring this book.Worth of reading time over time.
I am devouring this book.Worth of reading time over time.
January 6, 2014
Foundation text, I have now read thee.
March 20, 2015
4.5/5
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