Jerome Bruner: biography of the driving force behind the cognitive revolution

Jerome seymour bruner (United States, 1915 - 2016) is one of the most influential psychologists in the development of psychology in the 20th century, and for good reason. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University in 1941, he carried out a series of works and research on perception and learning that led him to confront behaviorists, What B. F. Skinner, who understood this process as a product of memorizing appropriate (or "useful") responses to certain stimuli.

When, during the 1950s, Bruner acted as the promoter of the cognitive revolution that would end in the creation of the Center for Cognitive Studies Harvard and the consolidation of cognitive psychology, the crisis of the behaviorist paradigm aggravated and began to forge the cognitivist current, which today is the dominant one in practically the whole world.

In addition to his contributions to the cognitive psychologyJerome Bruner has spent several decades teaching at both Harvard and Oxford, retiring from teaching having turned 90.

Jerome Bruner's Three Models of Learning

Like many other researchers engaged in cognitive psychology, Jerome Bruner spent a lot of time studying how we learn during our first years of life. This led him to develop a theory about three basic ways to represent reality that, at the same time, are three ways of learning based on our experiences. Its about enactive model, the iconic model and the symbolic model.

According to Bruner, these models or modes of learning are presented in a staggered manner, one after the other. following an order that goes from the most physical way and related to the immediately accessible to the symbolic and abstract. It is a theory of learning very inspired by the work of Jean piaget and his proposals about the stages of cognitive development.

The similarities between the ideas of Jerome Bruner and those of Piaget do not end there, since in both theories learning is understood as a process in which the consolidation of certain learning allows things to be learned later that could not be understood before.

1. Enactive model

The enactive model that Bruner proposed is the learning mode that comes first, since is based on something we do from the first days of life: physical action, in the broadest meaning of the term. In this, the interaction with the environment serves as the basis for the acting representation, that is, the processing of information about what is close to us that reaches us through the senses.

Thus, in Jerome Bruner's enactive model, learning takes place through imitation, manipulation of objects, dance and acting, etc. It is a learning mode comparable to Piaget's sensorimotor stage. Once certain learnings have been consolidated through this mode, the iconic model appears.

2. Iconic model

The iconic mode of learning is based on the use of drawings and images in general that can be used to provide information about something beyond themselves. Examples of learning based on the iconic model are the memorization of countries and capitals looking at a map, memorizing different animal species by looking at photographs, or drawings or movies, etc.

For Jerome Bruner, the iconic mode of learning represents the transition from the concrete to the abstract, and therefore has characteristics that belong to these two dimensions.

3. Symbolic model

The symbolic model is based on the use of language, whether spoken or written. As language is the most complex symbolic system that exists, it is through this learning model that the contents and processes related to the abstract are accessed.

Although the symbolic model is the last to appear, Jerome Bruner emphasizes that the other two continue to occur when learned in this way, although they have lost much of their prominence. For example, to learn the movement patterns of a dance we will have to resort to the enactive mode regardless of our age, and the same will happen if we want to memorize the parts of the brain human.

Learning according to Jerome Bruner

Beyond the existence of these learning modes, Bruner has also held a particular vision about what is the general learning. Unlike the traditional conception of what learning is, which equates it to memorization almost literal content that is "stored" in the minds of students and learners, Jerome Bruner understands learning as a process in which the learner plays an active role.

Starting from a constructivist approach, Jerome Bruner understands that the source of learning is the intrinsic motivation, curiosity and, in general, everything that generates interest in the learner.

Thus, for Jerome Bruner, learning is not so much the result of a series of actions as a continuous process that is based on the way in which the individual classifies the new information that is arriving to create a whole with sense. How successful you are in grouping pieces of knowledge together and classifying them effectively determine whether learning is consolidated and serves as a springboard to other types of learning or not.

The role of teachers and tutors

Although Jerome Bruner noted that the learner plays an active role in learning, he also he placed a lot of emphasis on the social context and, specifically, on the role of those who supervise this learning. Bruner, just like he did Vygotsky, he maintains that it is not learned individually but within a social context, that leads him to the conclusion that there is no learning without the help of others, be they teachers, parents, friends with more experience, etc.

The role of these facilitators is to act as guarantors that a guided discovery is made whose motor is the curiosity of the learners. In other words, they must put into play all the means so that the apprentice can develop her interests and obtain practice and knowledge in return. This is the basic idea of scaffolding.

It is therefore not surprising that, like other educational psychologists such as John Dewey, Bruner proposed that schools should be places that give way to the natural curiosity of children. students, offering them ways of learning through inquiry and the possibility of developing their interests thanks to the participation of third parties who guide and act as referents.

The spiral curriculum

Jerome Bruner's research has led him to propose a spiral educational curriculum, in which the contents are periodically reviewed so that each time the contents already learned are reconsolidated in the light of the new information available.

Bruner's spiraling curriculum graphically depicts what he means by learning: reformulation constant of what has been internalized to make it richer and more nuanced as various experiences.