BSED Major in Social Studies 2

Bruner's Constructivist Theory Module

Module 13 – Bruner's Constructivist Theory

Take the Challenge!

In this Module, challenge yourself to attain the following learning outcomes:

Describe the development of the child's ability to represent knowledge.

Explain how the spiral curriculum works.

---

Introduction
Jerome Bruner was one of the first proponents of constructivism. A major theme in the theory of Bruner is that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge.

---

Advance Organizer

1. Spiral Curriculum

2. Bruner's Constructivist Theory (Main Concepts)

Representation of Knowledge

Enactive

Iconic

Symbolic

Theory of Instruction

Predisposition to Learn

Structure of Knowledge

Effective Sequencing

Reinforcement

Discovery Learning

Categorization

---

On the right side:
"Learners are encouraged to discover facts and relationships for themselves."
– Jerome Bruner

---

Here is the text extracted from the provided image:

---

Activity
Think of a topic that you studied when you were in your preschool or elementary years, and then you studied it again in high school, and probably you had that same topic again in college.

What was the topic?

---

Try to recall how the topic was discussed/tackled in class (use of visual aids by teacher, experiment, field trip, etc.).

Describe what and how you learned about the topic during preschool/elementary.

---

Describe what and how you learned about the topic during high school.

---

Describe what and how you learned about the topic in college.

---

---

Analysis
Compare and contrast how the topic was taught to you in the different levels (Try to recall the activities, materials, details given, etc.).

Why do you think the same topic was taught in the three different levels in school? Cite three or more reasons in bulleted form.

---

---

Abstraction/Generalization
In the activity you just had, you would have surely seen that a single topic can be taught in preschool/elementary, then again in high school, and still again in college! Take for instance, in learning about Jose Rizal, in elementary we may have his picture in a postcard, know that he is our national hero, born on June 19, 1861 in Calamba Laguna, and maybe even have a field trip there. In high school, we may study his life in greater detail. In college, we would go deeper into analyzing Rizal's two novels in more detail, we may look into the personal and social factors that influenced his life and work and write a term paper on it. This repeated topic on Rizal is a way of applying the principles in Bruner's Theory. He gave us important concepts in development of representation, the spiral curriculum and discovery learning. These concepts are all in line with the constructivist approach. (Constructivism will be discussed in Module 14).