BRUNERS INDUCTIVE LEARNING THEORY

Introduction
Jerome Bruner was born on Oct 1, 1915 in New York He is an American Psychologist and culture-interested educator His work on perception, learning, memory & other aspects of cognition in young ones has influenced the American educational system

Bruners Constructivist Theory

a general framework for instruction based upon the study of cognition

linked to child development research (especially Piaget)

originated from a conference focused on science and math learning

illustrated his theory in the context of mathematics and social programs for the young children

Enactive

Iconic

3 Stages of Cognitive Growth

Symbolic

STATE Enactive Iconic

APPROXIMATE CHARACTERISTICS AGE 0 - 1 years 1 - 6 years Know his/her world through senses Knows his/her world through concrete images Knows his/her world through abstractions

Symbolic

6+ years

Table 1: Bruners Three Stages of Cognitive Development

The instructor & student should engage in an active dialogue

Learning is an active, social process

Bruners Major Ideas

The instructor encourage students to discover principles by themselves

Student selects information, originates hypotheses & makes decisions

Predisposition towards learning

The nature & pacing of rewards & punishments

Theory of Instruction

A body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner

Has the most effective sequences in which to present material

3 Principles of Giving Instruction

Must be concerned with the experiences & contexts

Must be structured

Designed to facilitate extrapolation

The child is an active player in discovering key principles of knowledge through her interaction

Bruners Model of Discovery Learning

The child builds her own structures & organizes her knowledge

Discovery as a Reflective Teaching Strategy

Strategies that lead students to discover and learn for themselves

Teachers think about and analyze what is happening as they teach, learners be encouraged to think about their own learning

Learners are encouraged to assume responsibility for their learning & thinking Emphasizes the active, discovery-oriented role of the learner, teaching is a process of facilitating learning & discovery

Condition that Facilitate Discovery Learning

Set Need state

Diversity of training

Mastery of specific

SET
A predisposition to react in certain way.e.g a discovery-oriented person is one whose usual approach to a problem is to look for relationships among items of information

Need State
level of arousal, excitation, or alertness of the learner

A moderate level of arousal is more conducive to discovery learning than either an excessively high or low level

Student need to be alert

They also need to be excited and interested rather than frightened or panicked

Refers to the
extent to which the learner has already mastered specific, relevant information

MASTERY OF SPECIFICS

The wider the range of information learners possess, the more likely they are to find relationships within that information

A learner who is exposed to information in a wide variety of circumstances is more likely to develop Coding systems to relate and organize that information

DIVERSITY OF TRAINING
The same subjects should be taught to learners more than once but with differing amounts of detail and at different levels of abstraction

Providing students with a range of experiences which gradually increase their familiarity with new concepts

Teachers definition of a concept is gradually constructed as a result of exposure to a whole range of activities & experiences

Bruners Model of Inductive Reasoning

Encourage children to make intuitive guesses

Emphasize the basic structure of new material

Pose a problem to the children & let them find the answer

Applying Bruners Theory in Science Classroom

Present many examples & concept

Apply new Learning to many different situations & kinds of problems

Help children construct coding system

Practical Application

Emphasize the basic structure of new material

E.g; use demonstration that reveal basic principal, e.g; demonstrate the law of magnetism by using similar & opposite poles of a set of bar magnets Encourage children to make outline of basic point made in text book or discovered in activities

Present many examples & concept

E.g; when presenting an explanation of the phases of the moon, have the children observe the phases in a variety of ways, such as direct observation of the changing shape of the moon in the evening demonstration of the changes using a flashlight and sphere and diagrams Using magazine pictures to show the stages in a space shuttle mission, have the class make models that show the stages and list the stages on the chalkboard

Help children construct coding system

E.g Invent a game that requires children to classify rocks Have children maintain scrapbooks in which they keep collected leaf specimens that are grouped according to observed characteristics

Apply new learning to many different situations & kinds of problems

E.g; Learn how scientist estimate the size of populations by having children count the number in a sample and estimate the numbers of grasshoppers in a lawn and in a meadow

Pose a problem to the children and let them find the answer
E.g; ask questions that will lead naturally to activities-why should wear seatbelts? And what are some ingredients that most junk foods have? Do a demonstration that raises a question in the childrens minds. For e.g; levitate a washer using magnet or mix two colored solutions to produce a third color

Encourage children to make intuitive guesses

E.g; ask the children to guess the amount of water that goes down the drain each time a child gets a drink of water from a water fountain Give the children magazine photographs of the evening sky and have them guess the locations of some constellations

Conclusion
Jerome Bruners research revealed that teachers need to provide children with experiences to help them discover underlying ideas, concepts, or patterns. His main idea is inductive thinking which means going from the specific to the general. This include using ideas from ones experience and applying it in another situation.

Inductive approaches to learning rely more on providing students with a range of experiences which gradually increase their familiarity with new concepts before attempting to draw these together into a coherent understanding of the new concepts. Rather than being faced with the teachers definition of a concept at the beginning of a topic, the students understanding of the concept is gradually constructed as a result to exposure to a whole range of activities and experiences

THANK YOU