Constructivism Pt.2: The Cognitive Revolution

Jerome Bruner was an advocate of the so-called ‘Cognitive Revolution,’ an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences – “an interdisciplinary study of the cognitive processes underlying the acquisition and use of knowledge” (“Cognitive Science”, 2007). Following on from the work of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, he developed a number of cognitive & constructivist psychological approaches “not to ‘reform’ behaviourism, but to replace it” (1990, p.3). Bruner demonstrated that a learner’s actions are less constrained by immediate environmental stimuli, and that cognitive processes mediate the relationship between stimulus and response. He asserted that learning could occur without an observable manifest behaviour and that it was possible to undertake a task or acquire knowledge ‘mentally’ rather than through a purely positivist or behaviourist methodologies phenomenology. By emphasising the importance of teaching as a means of enhancing cognitive development, Bruner saw the role of the instructor as one who mediates the information to be learned, delivering it in a format appropriate to the learner's current state of understanding. The instructor was responsible for encouraging learners to discover principles by themselves, and both learners and instructors should engage in an active dialogue: “practice in discovering for oneself teaches one to acquire information in a way that makes that information more readily viable in problem solving” (Bruner, 1961, p.26). To enhance this process he maintained that learning and curricula should be organised in a learning spiral, where content is structured and distributed in a format that is appropriate for the learner’s current level of knowledge. The content must also be sequenced in such a fashion that the learner is appropriately challenged and stimulated by the content so that the information being mediated by the instructor continually builds upon what the learner has already assimilated (see Figure 1).




Figure 1. Bruner's Learning Spiral (adapted from Harvard Project Zero)

References:

Bruner, J. S. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review 31(1): 21–32

Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press

Cognitive Science. (2007). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. [Internet] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Science [Accessed 1st May 2007]

Constructivism Pt.1

In her comprehensive reference text Psychology of learning for instruction, Marcy Driscoll describes constructivism as having

…multiple roots in psychology and philosophy, among which are the cognitive and developmental perspectives of Piaget, the interactional and cultural emphases of Vygotsky and Bruner, the contextual nature of learning, the active learning of Dewey, the epistemological discussions of von Glasersfeld and the paradigm and scientific revolutions of Thomas Kuhn.

(1994, p.375)

Constructivism is an approach to learning based on the premise that cognition, or learning, is the result of mental construction: it is an active process in which learners construct new ideas, skills and behaviours based upon their prior and current knowledge, behaviour and skill assets. The learner transforms information, constructs knowledge, and makes decisions based upon extant cognitive structures or mental models. These cognitive structures - what Roger Schank calls “scripts” in his Dynamic Memory Model (1982) - provide meaning and organisation to experiences and allow the individual to go “beyond the information given” (Bruner, 1974). Even though there are numerous interpretations of constructivism, several central concepts inhabit all constructivist theories. Cunningham and Duffy (1996) identified two major similarities that are the foundation of all constructivist thought. They are that “learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge” and “instruction is a process of supporting that construction rather that communicating knowledge” (1996, p.172).

References:

Bruner, J. S. (1974) Going Beyond the Information Given. New York: Norton.

Cunningham, D. J. & Duffy, T. M. (1996) Constructivism: Implications for the design and delivery of instruction. IN: Jonassen. D. H. (Ed.), Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 170- 198). New York: Simon & Shuster Macmillan.

Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of learning for instruction. Boston, MA. Allyn & Bacon.

Schank, R. (1982) Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers and People. Cambridge University Press.

Learning Theory: Back to school for Christmas

As I've got some holiday time at my disposal over Christmastime , I've decided to refresh my knowledge on Learning Theory in the context of how I use the various learning models and methodologies. So that means that there will be a large amount of information concerning Cognitivism and its offshoots, and much less about the Behaviourist track . So, let's start at the beginning…

What is learning?

In the field of organisational development, the terms ‘training’ and ‘learning’ are often used interchangeably: both broadly refer to the acquisition of new or enhanced knowledge, skills, attitudes or behaviour through the medium of instruction whether delivered by a source of information such as a text or a computer application, a teacher, or a mentor. The key difference between the two terms is in the reflexive nature of learning and the integration of the knowledge, skill, attitude or behaviour into the individual’s cognitive constructs - a process Lev Vygotsky called “internalisation” and elegantly described as “an internal reconstruction of an external operation (1978, p.56).

References

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society. Edited by Cole, M. John-Steiner, V. Scribner, Souberman, E. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press

Best wishes Terry Pratchett

Not a learning entry in the true sense of the word, other than I was deeply saddened to read today that the author Terry Pratchett is suffering from early-onset Alzheimers.
Best wishes Terry, you aten't dead yet...