Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner is one of the forefathers of the Constructivist Theory.  Bruner embraced discovery learning.   Discovery learning is when students learn by actively participating in the learning process.  “Bruner felt students were more likely to understand and remember concepts they had discovered in the course of their own exploration” (Roblyer Doering 41). He believed social influences had a strong effect on development.  Like Vygotsky, Bruner also felt it is possible to structure knowledge in a way that enables the learner to most readily grasp the information.    Bruner believed that instructors were facilitators of learning.  They are there to guide learning, but the students were to actively discover and learn for themselves.  When assigning tasks to the students, the teacher should use terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create." Student to teacher dialog is encouraged as well as student to student.   

Jerome bruner (1915 - ) constructivism & discovery learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/constructivism/bruner.html

Smith, M.K. (2002) 'Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education', the encyclopedia of informal education http://www.infed. org/thinkers/bruner.htm.