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Jerome Bruner: An Overview of Key Ideas
Sally Myers
Jerome Bruner (1915â2016) was a philosopher and psychologist whose work spanned seven decades and many different disciplines including developmental, cognitive and cultural psychology, linguistics, law, literary theory, computer science, anthropology and, of course most famously, education. He was born blind and not able to see until after operations to remove cataracts when he was two years old. Perhaps this was the root of his lifelong quest to understand how we engage with, comprehend and mentally represent the world within the limited way in which we are able to perceive it. Speaking in an interview in 2008, he said:
We will never know how the world really is; we always have to construct what we think the world is. We do it by describing the human situation by telling stories; we do it in science; we do it in interesting kinds of ways of thinking of new images and so forth. So my passion has basically got to do with how human minds make this sort of reality.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2H_swMUlOg)
Bruner was convinced that human beings create rather than discover truth and meaning, and he spent his whole life exploring how we construct these worldviews. The following sketch of Bruner's life is drawn from his autobiography, In Search of Mind (Bruner, 1983).
Bruner gained his doctorate entitled âA Psychological Analysis of International Radio Broadcasts of Belligerent Nationsâ from Harvard University, before serving in the Psychological Warfare Division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Europe during WW2 under General Eisenhower. After the war, he returned to Harvard. He was at the forefront of the cognitive revolution in psychology; the reaction to and movement away from behaviourism, which began in the 1950s. He became one of the founders of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Harvard. At the time, computational models of the mind were central to the cognitive revolution. However, it is indicative of how Bruner allowed his own thinking to continue to develop over time that he himself subsequently challenged those models. Bruner then turned to focus most of his attention on educational studies and quickly found himself in the middle of political debates around education in America. Prominent in the background to these, was technological competition with the former Soviet Union. In 1959, he was asked to head up a curriculum reform group for the National Academy of Science. This was to prove the turning point of his career. His conclusions were widely read and deemed very controversial by many conservative pressure groups. They have nevertheless been highly influential in education studies and often the starting point for other thinkers ever since (Weltman, 1999, p. 161). In 1972, the Centre for Cognitive Studies closed and Bruner moved first to Oxford, then back to Harvard, and finally to New York University. In his later work, Bruner shifted his attention from education to law, and in particular to applying his thinking regarding psychology, anthropology, linguistics and literary theory, to legal practice. He died on 5 June 2016, aged 100, and the tributes from his many friends and disciples gave testimony to both his genius and humanity (Association for Psychological Science, 2016, https:// www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/remembering-jerome-bruner accessed 22nd October 2020). Colleagues summarise Bruner's approach and lifelong enquiry into cognition and education as being, âengagingly humanistic⌠at the same time, ebullient, fun and profoundly moralâ (Bakhurst & Shanker, 2001, p. 17).
Bruner's work is wide-ranging, and he explores and draws from many disciplines. However, one unifying aspect throughout his writing is the fact that Bruner takes a particular constructivist view of the world, which aims to occupy the middle ground between nature and nurture. Crucial to any account of Bruner's work is recognition of how he understands the dynamic relationship between an individual and their social environment in meaning-making. He asserts that individuals construct meaning using both the innate cognitive and the cultural tools available to them. His thinking is heavily influenced by both the biological determinism of Piaget and the social constructivism of Vygotsky. He accommodates both, but does not synthesise them. It is Bruner's embrace of both perspectives that makes him such a difficult but also potent thinker to work with. It is important, therefore, to understand the foundation upon which he builds.
Bruner asserts frequently that that there is no (using his term) âaboriginal truthâ. He does not believe that it is possible or indeed even desirable to reproduce a mirror of some supposed ârealâ world in the mind. Instead, he claims that individuals are active participants in constructing their ârealityâ, with and within the social environment in which they find themselves. He sometimes calls this joint process âsense-makingâ but more usually, after Nelson Goodman, âworld makingâ (Goodman, 1984).
Bruner argues that just as visual perception is filtered by various biological mechanisms in order to prevent an individual from becoming overwhelmed, we also limit what we think and, therefore, consciously âknowâ at any one time (Bruner, 2006a, p. 24). As with sight, this restrictive filtering prevents individuals from becoming overwhelmed. It also facilitates a way of focussing on and thinking about a particular idea. Bruner proposes that it is through this faculty that humans have the ability to transcend and achieve a new understanding of their existing knowledge. Bruner calls this âgoing beyond crude knowingâ, his term for the very basic type of knowing, which he argues is simply the automatic action that comes to be associated with a particular stimuli. In circumstances where there is no meta-cognition involved, Bruner is fond of saying: âThe fish will be the last to discover water!â (Bruner, 2006a, p. 19). He proposes that although they do not always choose to do so, humans are able, when pushed or minded, not only to stand outside their existing âknowingâ and examine it critically but also to envisage alternatives, compare and contrast them, and come to conclusions about the validity of former suppositions based upon these new perspectives.
To achieve this requires a certain level of basic consistency in knowledge about self and world, which Bruner calls a âguardian of permanenceâ (Bruner, 1990, p. 26). However, Bruner does not mean to imply that this is in any way unchangeable. On the contrary, Bruner argues that knowledge and self-understanding in light of that knowledge is constantly changing. He believes that when we apprehend the world, we sift and sort what we find in order to make sense of it. At its most basic level, this process might be prompted when we recognise information that we have seen before. He quotes William James who described this kind of recognition as: âHello Thingumbob again!â (Bruner, 2006a, p. 8). Bruner argues we develop mental structures and schema within which to store and relate information we recognise (Bruner, 2006a, p. 9). Eventually, in Bruner's terms, we are able to move beyond the information given, i.e. the information as it is presented and explore new ways of structuring it. This becomes especially necessary when we come across new information that does not fit with existing ideas and demands we pursue alternative means of understanding. Bruner describes this learning process as beginning with imitation, and he, therefore, argues that categories and methods of processing information are, at least nominally, socially derived. However, Bruner goes on to suggest that learning can progress via didactic exposure, to self-management of knowledge, and finally to facilitate what he calls âactually thinkingâ (Bruner, 2006b, p. 166).
Bruner argues that just as it is widely established that discovering the structure of any body of existing shared knowledge is fundamental to the ability to efficiently conserve memory, the same âgraspingâ of structure is also fundamental to the effective and competent understanding and communication of any body of communally held knowledge (Bruner, 2006a, p. 64). He argues that this is how an individual builds a mental picture of the structure of their world, thereby enabling a level of permanence, necessary to conduct life. Bruner argues that this is then mentally represented in two distinct forms. Bruner terms these modes of representation, paradigmatic, and narrative modes of knowing. He argues that we use both modes of knowing in our world sense-making.
Briefly, Bruner identifies paradigmatic knowing as that way of structuring the world that is commonly called âscientificâ. It is pragmatic, concerned with regulation and order. It is directed towards identifying causation and explaining phenomena in order to establish laws about behaviour. In this mode of thinking, the mind acts much like a computational system and is occupied with how information is structured and stored. It is employed to determine âtruthâ. Narrative knowing in contrast, Bruner argues, is more commonly associated with the âpoeticâ. It is heuristic, concerned with imagination, new perspectives, and is (usually within rules of non-contradiction) without limit. It is directed towards interpretation after the fact and allows information to be represented in different forms. Its mode of thinking is likened to hermeneutics, and it is occupied with understanding the information it discovers. It is employed to find what is believable and to recognise verisimilitude (âtruthâ-likeness).
In his earlier work, Bruner proposed that these two modes of apprehending the world were related to such an extent that they were in essence, mutual and translatable. In his later writing, however, he changed his mind about this deciding that they are, in fact, separate and independent. Obviously, explanation requires interpretation and understanding requires ordering, but even so the two modes of thinking are, he claims, clearly distinguishable. Regarding this conclusion, Bruner says:
Surely we can live with the two, the austere but well-defined world of the paradigmatic and the darkly challenging world of the narrative. Indeed, it is when we lose sight of the two in league that our lives narrow.
(Bruner, 2002, p. 101)
According to Bruner, paradigmatic and narrative forms of knowing sometimes overlap, inform each other or information in one mode gets re-coded to the other, but they are not reducible one to the other in either direction. He argues, therefore, that they are both necessary as an individual represents their âworldâ to themselves and others.
Taking these two modes of ordering cognition as his starting point, Bruner explores the various ways in which an individual's representation of reality changes day by day, as it adapts to meet new perspectives and information. He describes, and here, he follows Piaget, how we assimilate (i.e. conform new information to existing mental categories) and accommodate (i.e. adapt those existing categories or patterns to fit new external circumstances). This process, he argues, is usually unconscious. However, he believes it is by no means predetermined and automatic. Bruner identifies a number of variables that influence the development and direction of both paradigmatic and narrative modes of knowing. This is particularly the focus of his work on the culture of education, where he argues that what is officially taught is only a fraction of how children come to understand a particular phenomenon. They are, he argues, much more influenced by social expectations than actual facts (Bruner, 1996). He also identifies other influences on paradigmatic and narrative modes of knowing, including personality, habitual expectation and prejudice. Furthermore, Bruner argues, we are not limited to using existing internal or external frameworks, but rather, that humans have the ability to envisage alternatives. He proposes that they do this using what he terms âknowing with the left handâ (Bruner, 1979).
Bruner argues that in order to âbreak outâ of habitual thinking patterns, humans employ imagination; that is, they âpictureâ other options. Examples of imagination offered by him include the world of play and role-play. He describes how a child experiments with different imaginary roles as part of establishing and understanding their place in the world (Bruner, 2006a, p. 162). This playful reimagining is voluntary, but Bruner suggests that a reconfiguring of mental representation might also be prompted by a challenging alternative external manifestation of an existing mental schema. To illustrate his point, he describes how an artist, he uses Cezanne as an example, recreates the subject of their painting in a different medium (Bruner, 2006b, p. 25). Similarly, he explains how a writer, this time his example is Ricoeur, not only describes reality but also then enlarges upon it (Bruner, 2006b, p. 30).
When an individual is confronted with new information or ways of âpicturingâ the world that challenges their existing paradigmatic patterns, Bruner believes that they turn to narrative to help them reconcile cognitive dissonance by adapting old or forming new schemata. The way that story is used to adapt to the unexpected is crucial to Bruner's understanding of how individuals continually recreate the world around them. It begins, he argues, at a very early age and has some elements of being instinctive. Bruner examines how the childhood game ââPeekabooâ⌠domesticates error and surpriseâ (Bruner, 2002, p. 32). This foreshadows how deviation from the expected is highlighted and also how it is resolved back into ânormalityâ. Bruner argues that this resolution involves both intrapersonal and interpersonal activity. Internally, âselfâ is represented in narrative form, and individuals reconstruct their internal autobiography as they meet new situations. This not only involves negotiating past memories but also hopes for the future. Bruner identifies the tension of being caught between the familiar and the possible within this creative process (Bruner, 2002, p. 13). However, when creating and recreating these personal narratives, individuals also draw heavily upon external, i.e. culturally available sources and use established roles and ways of being in order to tell others, and themselves, what, and even how, they are thinking. Bruner argues that change in both the paradigmatic and narrative modes of knowing occurs as a result of this ongoing dialogue between an individual's âinner worldâ and their immediate, and then wider culture.
Bruner argues that narrative is the key mechanism by which individuals, situations and events are envisaged in different ways. He explores how literature imagines, and in imagining creates, hypothetical worlds and alternative models of the internal and external world (Bruner, 2006b, p. 106). Bruner argues that the flexibility of narrative makes it the ideal medium through which ânewâ information is not only understood, but also how it is incorporated into an individual's worldview. Unsurprisingly, Bruner draws heavily on narrative theory when he considers how individuals present and re-present themselves to self and others in response to change. He argues that narrative mental representations of the world are constructed in the same way as stories. However, this does not mean that there are no regulations or templates involved. Although stories are constructed in a way that is in part idiosyncratic, socially constructed patterns and rules are also followed.
Bruner argues that paradigmatic and narrative modes of knowing are employed not only by individuals but also collectively, and that these modes of knowing are present not only in individual minds but also within shared social self-understanding. He argues that this is by way of common processes, but also shared content, in the form of a mixture of history, folk pedagogy, legally enshrined behaviour and largely sub-conscious knowledge of the âway things areâ. This social knowledge inevitably heavily influences how an individual constructs the representation of his or her own perceived reality. Bruner agrees with the commonly accepted view that culture is a dominant factor in this meaning-making process. However, he argues that an individual has the freedom to construct their own understandings within their environment, using both modes of knowing.
Bruner suggests that an individual's knowledge of the world is gained first by direct enactive (physical) engagement with the world and then through iconic (pictured) memory and finally through symbolic (representative) systems. As learning becomes progressively more complex, people become increasingly reliant on agreed symbolic systems, especially language. Yet, paradoxically, as they become more fluent in the different socially available methods of interpreting their world, they also develop the ability to become more self-reflective. In all cases, learning about self and world is an organic process, with tension in meaning-making between the individual and the culture in which they find and identify themselves. Tension, because this culture both facilitates and frustrates their growth.
Bruner identifies three specific antinomies that exist between the individual and their social environment: (1) the opposition between the drive to achieve individual potential and the pressure to reproduce and further the culture within which the individual is developing. Bruner also refers to this as idiosyncratic v. conventional development; (2) the opposition between intra-psychic and socially situated learning; i.e. learning âin one's own headâ and vicariously enabled learning. Bruner also refers to this as âinside outâ v. âoutside inâ learning; and (3) the opposition between the search for objective universal truth and what is locally established and subjectively accepted knowledge (Bruner, 2006b, pp. 175â177). There is no shortage of psychologists occupying all points of the biological determinist/social constructivist continuum. However, no single point along this line is complete in itself as it necessarily excludes other views. Bruner's use of antinomies, therefore,...
