Add a new chapter to

an existing one- Jerome Bruner

Bruner (picture to the right; from rededucom.org) had always had somthing to say: "‘The best way to create

interest in a subject is to render it worth knowing,’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 31). He also says: "In a learning episode,

teachers need to empower students, incapacitate them, and that brings in ‘the importance of a high

degree of mastery of materials in order to operate effectively’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 57) and only 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’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 62). To him, an ‘unconnected set

of facts has a pitiably short half-life in memory’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 31) and that's the state of mere know-how. If only education as a process

can be facilitated or simplified, to students, ‘if it can be given to them in terms they understand’

(Bruner, 1960, p. 39) then operability is there.

One ‘aspect of learning may be called transformation-the process of manipulating knowledge to make it fit new tasks’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 48). That's why instructors

usually tailor their material to the capacities and needs of students, by manipulating learning episodes in several ways: by shortening or lengthening the episode, by

piling on extrinsic rewards in the form of praise’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 49). ‘Given enough absorption in class, some students may be able to carry over the feeling to work

done on their own’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 50). It is not a case of (Bruner, 1960, p. 51) that "to learn is to learn is to learn.'

Bruner, an American psychologist, made significant contributions to education and learnedness: ‘It is not amiss to urge that actual curricula be reexamined with an

eye to the issues of continuity and development’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 54). In a learning episode, teachers need to empower students, incapacitate them, and that brings

in ‘the importance of a high degree of mastery of materials in order to operate effectively’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 57). An adage you cannot miss then again: ‘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’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 62).

More importantly, Bruner claims that ‘changing social, cultural, and political conditions continually alter the surroundings and the goals of schools

and their students’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 8). He proceeds on (Bruner, 1960) that ‘if all students are helped to the full utilization of their intellectual powers, we will

have a better chance of surviving as a democracy in an age of enormous technological and social complexity’ (p. 10). ‘The shrewd guess,' to him, 'the fertile

hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion-these are the most valuable coins of the thinker’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 14). Instructors, he concludes, need to

have students ‘ignite others with a sense of the intrinsic excitement of the subject’ (Bruner, 1960, p. 90).

Bruner, J. (1960). The Process of Education. Harvard University Press