Constructivism: Jerome Bruner's Constructivist Theory

 
  Please forgive me if my posts are in chunks. You know, I update my blog using only my cellphone. I don't have any laptop or a pc of my own. I repeated this how many times and I will say this again. For those of you who have an old or surplus laptop or pc, I will appreciate it very much if you can give it to me...wehehehe(half joke-half truth)

     I would like to tackle about one of the constructivist psychologists whose works are actually utilized in schools but unknown to some. Since I lack character spaces on my previous post, I wasn't able to discuss that there are 2 views of constructivism:cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. I will just discuss these later as I discuss each constructivist psychologist and his works.

     Our man of the moment is Jerome Bruner. He is under the cognitive constructivism school of thought which stresses individual and inner construction of knowledge. He has given us important concepts about learning which I will just discuss one by one.

I. Stages of Knowledge Representation
According to Bruner, knowledge representation develops in 3 stages: Enactive, Iconic and Symbolic.
1. Enactive. The first stage in which learning is based on hands on experiences of physical objects together with the consequences that go after. Knowledge is represented through senses. You may have noticed this among children who learn about the world through touching and manipulating objects, smelling flowers, tasting a fruit, etc. However, this doesn't mean that this type of representation is only for babies or young children. This could also mean manipulative learning of objects such as learning how to use a microscope, to ride in a bicycle, or practicing how to dance, to do stunts, or to play a musical instrument.
2. Iconic. Knowledge can now be represented using models and pictures. Learners know how to make mental images of their world. This can be seen on books full of brightly colored pictures that are being used to teach children.
3. Symbolic. Learners can think in abstract. So abstract terms and symbol systems can be used to represent knowledge like numbers, mathematical symbols, letters and language. This is the reason why most of the books in college do not have so many pictures compared to books used in elementary.

Images of these topics and better and more credible (why? does this mean mine isn't? hehehe) discussions are found in this link http://brunerwiki.wikispaces.com/