Bruner's modes of cognitive development

Bruner's Modes of Cognitive Development

1. Learning Learning : permanent influence on behaviour , knowledge and thinking skills, which comes through experience.

2. Behaviourist stand point… .. Learning Association between stimulus response Chance of success through trial and error Association through conditioning

3. Cognitive approach to learning Learner processes the stimuli received or perceived response is determined by this mental processing. Learning as defined by Cognitive Psychologists Learning : change in one’s cognitive structure which occurs when new information or experiences are combined with existing knowledge.

4. Modes of cognitive development (Bruner )

5. Bruner’s theory of cognitive development focused on the symbolic activities that human beings employed in constructing and making sense not only of the world, but of themselves. Bruner theorizes that children construct knowledge using three modes of what he called representation that corresponds to developmental stages.

6. Enactive Mode (0 – 1 Years) This mode of representation is dominant in babies who first represent or interact with the world through their actions. At this stage the infant represents thought processes through non-verbal activities based on motor actions and movements. Knowledge is therefore stored in muscle memory. Information is stored according to physical movements. When something has to be remembered, the movement is recreated.

7. The Iconic Mode (1 – 6 Years) This mode represents knowledge through visual or auditory images. Children in this mode represents things and events in terms of sensory images or mental pictures. Have difficulty in thinking beyond images , to categorize the knowledge or understand relationships between objects. Information is stored using images which may be based on smell, hearing or touch. A smell may trigger a memory.

8. The Symbolic Mode (7 Years onwards) This mode enables children to encode the world in terms of information storing symbols such as the words of our language or the numbers of mathematics. This allows information to be categorized and summarized so that it can be more readily manipulated and considered. The symbolic mode allows children to think beyond the physical images of the iconic mode. Information is stored in the form of language and numbers.

9. Educational Implications of Bruner’s Theory Education : facilitate child's thinking and problem solving skills which can then be transferred to a range of situations. Difficult concepts must be taught only when the teacher believes that the child has reached the appropriate state of cognitive maturity.. Complex ideas should be taught at a simplified level first, and then re-visited at more complex levels later on.

10. Educational Implications of Bruner’s Theory Bruner believed that the most effective way to develop a coding system is to discover it rather than being told it by the teacher. The concept of discovery learning implies that students construct their own knowledge. Teacher should facilitate the learning process and help student discover the relationship between bits of information . Primary level children should be allowed to manipulate objects . Middle school level children should be allowed to learn by observing pictures and simple demonstrations . At the higher level, Lecture method involving symbols and languages can be used .