Article:Towards a Theory of Instruction: Notes on Theory of Instruction
From unthinkMedia
In this essay Bruner talks about the questions of predisposition, structure, sequence, and reinforcement in preparing curricula and programmes. He makes the case for education as a knowledge-getting process: he quotes ‘Knowing is a process not a product’
Through out the articles he shows various learning tasks, such as scrambling sentences that sequenced in columns to create new interesting sentences, there is also an example on how he proposed teaching quadric equation to children using tangible flat squares made of wood. All this helps with discovery learning.
As curriculum is being build he stresses that it needs to be assessed by close observational and experimental methods. You don't want to simply see if the child is "achieving", but the artifacts that they are making and how they are organizing those artifacts. This is what enable a "test as you go" iterative revision of ideas.
In his article he mentions how there is not a one size fits all sequence that work for all children, however this does not mean that you couldn't design and effective curriculum. Curriculum needs various ways of activating children, presenting sequences, opportunities to skip parts, and different ways of putting thing. In short curriculum needs many avenues that lead to the same learning goal.
Contents |
interesting quotes
- To instruct someone... is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product. (1966: 72)
- ‘Knowing is a process not a product’
A course of study: five ideals
- To give students respect and confidence in the powers of their own mind.
- To extend that respect and confidence to their power to think about the human conditions, man's plight, and his social life.
- To provide a set of workable models that make it simpler to analyse the nature of the social world in which we give and the condition in which man finds himself.
- To impar a sense of respect for the capacities and humanity of man as a species.
- To leave the student with a sense of the unfinished business of man's evaluation.
Lesson Units
- Talks to teachers
- Queries and contrasts
- Devices
- Model Exercise
- Documentaries
- Supplementary Material
references
Bruner, J. S. (1966) Toward a Theory of Instruction, Cambridge, Mass.: Belkapp Press. 176 + x pages.
