Jerome Bruner – författare

In this characteristically graceful and provocative book, Jerome Bruner, one of the principal architects of the cognitive revolution, sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of mind. According to Professor Bruner, cognitive science has set its sights too narrowly on the logical, systematic aspects of mental life—those thought processes we use to solve puzzles, test hypotheses, and advance explanations. There is obviously another side to the mind—a side devoted to the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful. This is the side of the mind that leads to good stories, gripping drama, primitive myths and rituals, and plausible historical accounts. Bruner calls it the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.Drawing on recent work in literary theory, linguistics, and symbolic anthropology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology, Professor Bruner examines the mental acts that enter into the imaginative creation of possible worlds, and he shows how the activity of imaginary world making undergirds human science, literature, and philosophy, as well as everyday thinking, and even our sense of self.Over twenty years ago, Jerome Bruner first sketched his ideas about the mind’s other side in his justly admired book, On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds can be read as a sequel to this earlier work, but it is a sequel that goes well beyond its predecessor by providing rich examples of just how the mind’s narrative mode can be successfully studied. The collective force of these examples points the way toward a more humane and subtle approach to the investigation of how the mind works.

What we don't know about learning could fill a book--and it might be a schoolbook. In a masterly commentary on the possibilities of education, the eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner reveals how education can usher children into their culture, though it often fails to do so. Applying the newly emerging "cultural psychology" to education, Bruner proposes that the mind reaches its full potential only through participation in the culture--not just its more formal arts and sciences, but its ways of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and carrying out discourse. By examining both educational practice and educational theory, Bruner explores new and rich ways of approaching many of the classical problems that perplex educators.Education, Bruner reminds us, cannot be reduced to mere information processing, sorting knowledge into categories. Its objective is to help learners construct meanings, not simply to manage information. Meaning making requires an understanding of the ways of one's culture--whether the subject in question is social studies, literature, or science. The Culture of Education makes a forceful case for the importance of narrative as an instrument of meaning making. An embodiment of culture, narrative permits us to understand the present, the past, and the humanly possible in a uniquely human way.Going well beyond his earlier acclaimed books on education, Bruner looks past the issue of achieving individual competence to the question of how education equips individuals to participate in the culture on which life and livelihood depend. Educators, psychologists, and students of mind and culture will find in this volume an unsettling criticism that challenges our current conventional practices--as well as a wise vision that charts a direction for the future.

This country’s most challenging writer on education presents here a distillation, for the general reader, of half a decade’s research and reflection. His theme is dual: how children learn, and how they can best be helped to learn—how they can be brought to the fullest realization of their capacities.Jerome Bruner, Harper’s reports, has “stirred up more excitement than any educator since John Dewey.” His explorations into the nature of intellectual growth and its relation to theories of learning and methods of teaching have had a catalytic effect upon educational theory. In this new volume the subjects dealt with in The Process of Education are pursued further, probed more deeply, given concrete illustration and a broader context.“One is struck by the absence of a theory of instruction as a guide to pedagogy,” Mr. Bruner observes; “in its place there is principally a body of maxims.” The eight essays in this volume, as varied in topic as they are unified in theme, are contributions toward the construction of such a theory. What is needed in that enterprise is, inter alia, “the daring and freshness of hypotheses that do not take for granted as true what has merely become habitual,” and these are amply evidenced here.At the conceptual core of the book is an illuminating examination of how mental growth proceeds, and of the ways in which teaching can profitably adapt itself to that progression and can also help it along. Closely related to this is Mr. Bruner’s “evolutionary instrumentalism,” his conception of instruction as the means of transmitting the tools and skills of a culture, the acquired characteristics that express and amplify man’s powers—especially the crucial symbolic tools of language, number, and logic. Revealing insights are given into the manner in which language functions as an instrument of thought.The theories presented are anchored in practice, in the empirical research from which they derive and in the practical applications to which they can be put. The latter are exemplified incidentally throughout and extensively in detailed descriptions of two courses Mr. Bruner has helped to construct and to teach—an experimental mathematics course and a multifaceted course in social studies. In both, the students’ encounters with the material to be mastered are structured and sequenced in such a way as to work with, and to reinforce, the developmental process.Written with all the style and élan that readers have come to expect of Mr. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction is charged with the provocative suggestions and inquiries of one of the great innovators in the field of education.

The left hand has traditionally represented the powers of intuition, feeling, and spontaneity. In this classic book, Jerome Bruner inquires into the part these qualities play in determining how we know what we do know; how we can help others to know—that is, to teach; and how our conception of reality affects our actions and is modified by them.The striking and subtle discussions contained in On Knowing take on the core issues concerning man’s sense of self: creativity, the search for identity, the nature of aesthetic knowledge, myth, the learning process, and modern-day attitudes toward social controls, Freud, and fate. In this revised, expanded edition, Bruner comments on his personal efforts to maintain an intuitively and rationally balanced understanding of human nature, taking into account the odd historical circumstances which have hindered academic psychology’s attempts in the past to know man.Writing with wit, imagination, and deep sympathy for the human condition, Jerome Bruner speaks here to the part of man’s mind that can never be completely satisfied by the right-handed virtues of order, rationality, and discipline.

What have the social sciences to show for decades of systematic investigation of the problems of economic development? What basic problems have they solved and what remains to be done in the development of viable theoretical approaches to this area of research and policy? In an unusually open discussion, thirty-three experts from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, geography, sociology, and agriculture here present a stimulating re-examination of their accomplishments and mutual problems, of the progress the disciplines have made, and that which remains.The increased interest of social scientists in their sister disciplines has not been stimulated solely by intellectual exploration into the problems that they share and the particular insights each provides. Much of the interest stems from the groping and searching concern of field workers who find themselves investigating problems and systems which cannot be understood adequately in terms of a single kind of analysis, be it political, social, cultural, historical, or psychological. Fieldwork thrusts upon them the realization that their professional areas of concern overlap and converge upon aspects of life which traditionally (or academically) lie in the domains of other disciplines.A Reappraisal of Economic Development is distinguished by the vitality and spark of scholars of different disciplines interacting with each other. The book's formal essays are deliberately short, leaving the bulk of the volume to intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation of the positions, accomplishments, and proposals of the speakers and their critics. The result is a fruitful re-evaluation of the political, social, and geographic forces affecting economic development in emerging nations and a useful handbook for anyone dealing with the varied problems of foreign aid, health and educational development, labor organization, and foreign business.Andrew H. Whiteford was George L. Collie Professor of Anthropology, Beloit College, and director, Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit. For a twenty-year period he also served as the chair of the department of anthropology at Beloit. After retiring, he became active in the Indian Arts Research Center at the School of American Research, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, and the New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Since education takes place under conditions imposed by a technological society, Professor Bruner maintains that it is not enough to attempt reform through minor curriculum revisions. The program that fails to set knowledge within the context of action must be replaced. And to be truly relevant to our social needs, the scope of education must be extended toward overcoming the severe handicaps faced by children from impoverished areas.

Jerome Bruner argues that the cognitive revolution, with its current fixation on mind as “information processor,” has led psychology away from the deeper objective of understanding mind as a creator of meanings. Only by breaking out of the limitations imposed by a computational model of mind can we grasp the special interaction through which mind both constitutes and is constituted by culture.

In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty.Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains.But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless.Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century.A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice.

Stories pervade our daily lives, from human interest news items, to a business strategy described to a colleague, to daydreams between chores. Stories are what we use to make sense of the world. But how does this work? In Making Stories, the eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner examines this pervasive human habit and suggests new and deeper ways to think about how we use stories to make sense of lives and the great moral and psychological problems that animate them. Looking at legal cases and autobiography as well as literature, Bruner warns us not to be seduced by overly tidy stories and shows how doubt and double meaning can lie beneath the most seemingly simple case.

In this classic argument for curriculum reform in early education, Jerome Bruner shows that the basic concepts of science and the humanities can be grasped intuitively at a very early age. He argues persuasively that curricula should he designed to foster such early intuitions and then build on them in increasingly formal and abstract ways as education progresses.Bruner’s foundational case for the spiral curriculum has influenced a generation of educators and will continue to be a source of insight into the goals and methods of the educational process.

What have the social sciences to show for decades of systematic investigation of the problems of economic development? What basic problems have they solved and what remains to be done in the development of viable theoretical approaches to this area of research and policy? In an unusually open discussion, thirty-three experts from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, geography, sociology, and agriculture here present a stimulating re-examination of their accomplishments and mutual problems, of the progress the disciplines have made, and that which remains.The increased interest of social scientists in their sister disciplines has not been stimulated solely by intellectual exploration into the problems that they share and the particular insights each provides. Much of the interest stems from the groping and searching concern of field workers who find themselves investigating problems and systems which cannot be understood adequately in terms of a single kind of analysis, be it political, social, cultural, historical, or psychological. Fieldwork thrusts upon them the realization that their professional areas of concern overlap and converge upon aspects of life which traditionally (or academically) lie in the domains of other disciplines.A Reappraisal of Economic Development is distinguished by the vitality and spark of scholars of different disciplines interacting with each other. The book's formal essays are deliberately short, leaving the bulk of the volume to intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation of the positions, accomplishments, and proposals of the speakers and their critics. The result is a fruitful re-evaluation of the political, social, and geographic forces affecting economic development in emerging nations and a useful handbook for anyone dealing with the varied problems of foreign aid, health and educational development, labor organization, and foreign business.Andrew H. Whiteford was George L. Collie Professor of Anthropology, Beloit College, and director, Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit. For a twenty-year period he also served as the chair of the department of anthropology at Beloit. After retiring, he became active in the Indian Arts Research Center at the School of American Research, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, and the New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

What have the social sciences to show for decades of systematic investigation of the problems of economic development? What basic problems have they solved and what remains to be done in the development of viable theoretical approaches to this area of research and policy? In an unusually open discussion, thirty-three experts from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, geography, sociology, and agriculture here present a stimulating re-examination of their accomplishments and mutual problems, of the progress the disciplines have made, and that which remains.The increased interest of social scientists in their sister disciplines has not been stimulated solely by intellectual exploration into the problems that they share and the particular insights each provides. Much of the interest stems from the groping and searching concern of field workers who find themselves investigating problems and systems which cannot be understood adequately in terms of a single kind of analysis, be it political, social, cultural, historical, or psychological. Fieldwork thrusts upon them the realization that their professional areas of concern overlap and converge upon aspects of life which traditionally (or academically) lie in the domains of other disciplines.A Reappraisal of Economic Development is distinguished by the vitality and spark of scholars of different disciplines interacting with each other. The book''s formal essays are deliberately short, leaving the bulk of the volume to intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation of the positions, accomplishments, and proposals of the speakers and their critics. The result is a fruitful re-evaluation of the political, social, and geographic forces affecting economic development in emerging nations and a useful handbook for anyone dealing with the varied problems of foreign aid, health and educational development, labor organization, and foreign business.Andrew H. Whiteford was Geor

What have the social sciences to show for decades of systematic investigation of the problems of economic development? What basic problems have they solved and what remains to be done in the development of viable theoretical approaches to this area of research and policy? In an unusually open discussion, thirty-three experts from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, geography, sociology, and agriculture here present a stimulating re-examination of their accomplishments and mutual problems, of the progress the disciplines have made, and that which remains.The increased interest of social scientists in their sister disciplines has not been stimulated solely by intellectual exploration into the problems that they share and the particular insights each provides. Much of the interest stems from the groping and searching concern of field workers who find themselves investigating problems and systems which cannot be understood adequately in terms of a single kind of analysis, be it political, social, cultural, historical, or psychological. Fieldwork thrusts upon them the realization that their professional areas of concern overlap and converge upon aspects of life which traditionally (or academically) lie in the domains of other disciplines.A Reappraisal of Economic Development is distinguished by the vitality and spark of scholars of different disciplines interacting with each other. The book''s formal essays are deliberately short, leaving the bulk of the volume to intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation of the positions, accomplishments, and proposals of the speakers and their critics. The result is a fruitful re-evaluation of the political, social, and geographic forces affecting economic development in emerging nations and a useful handbook for anyone dealing with the varied problems of foreign aid, health and educational development, labor organization, and foreign business.Andrew H. Whiteford was Geor

Jerome Bruner, uno de los principales artífices de la revolución cognitiva, presenta en esta obra un nuevo enfoque para el estudio de la mente. Según el autor, la comprensión de los procesos mentales no puede limitarse al estudio de las capacidades que empleamos para resolver acertijos o comprobar hipótesis. La ciencia cognitiva se ha centrado demasiado en los aspectos sistemáticos y lógicos de la actividad mental, por lo que no puede captar otros mecanismos decisivos para los actos humanos de la imaginación, que nos permite dar sentido a la experiencia.Bruner concibe estos mecanismos como la "modalidad narrativa" de la mente, a la que se debe la existencia de buenos relatos, obras dramáticas imperecederas, mitos y crónicas históricas. Basándose en recientes trabajos sobre teoría literaria, lingüística, antropología simbólica, psicología cognitiva y del desarrollo, el autor examina los actos mentales que intervienen en la creación imaginaria de mundos posibles y muestra hasta qué punto determinan el desarrollo de las ciencias humanas, la literatura, la filosofía y el pensamiento cotidiano.Desde la perspectiva de la modalidad narrativa de la mente se puede mostrar en las obras de creación literaria cómo se construyen los significados gracias a la articulación de componentes emocionales, racionales, imaginativos y psicológicos de la actividad mental.

Bruner analiza las implicaciones de la psicología cultural en la educación. Este enfoque de la psicología parte del supuesto de que la actividad mental humana no se produce en solitario. "No se puede entender la actividad mental a no ser que se tenga en cuenta el contexto cultural y sus recursos, que le dan a la mente su forma y amplitud."El autor señala que los grandes cambios tecnológicos del mundo actual afectan a la vida humana en todos sus terrenos (trabajo, familia, comunidades y relaciones interpersonales).Ante esto las nuevas generaciones tienen que aprender no solo a manejar grandes cantidades de información e interaccionar con un mundo tecnológico cambiante, sino también a desarrollar un concepto de sí mismos como ciudadanos del mundo al mismo tiempo que conservar su identidad local. Esto supone un desafío para las escuelas y la educación en general, en la medida en que estas deben dejar de ser vehículos de transmisión de conocimientos y habilidades teniendo en cuenta el contexto cultural. La escuela es el primer y más importante contacto que el niño tiene con su cultura, en la cual trata de comprender sus complejidades y contradicciones. Por ello el objetivo de la educación es ayudarle a encontrar su camino en su cultura ayudándole no solo a dominar unas determinadas habilidades técnicas, sino a conocer y tomar conciencia del mundo en el que va a vivir.