Toward a Theory of Instruction

This country's most challenging writer on education presents here a distillation, for 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 fullest realization of their capacities. Mr. Bruner, Harper's reports, has stirred up more excitement than any educator since John Dewey. His explorations into 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 subjects dealt with Process of Education are pursued further, probed more deeply, given concrete illustration and a broader context. One is struck by 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 this volume, as varied topic as they are unified theme, are contributions toward construction of such a theory. What is needed 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 conceptual core of book is an illuminating examination of how mental growth proceeds, and of ways 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 means of transmitting tools and skills of a culture, acquired characteristics that express and amplify man's powers--especially thecrucial symbolic tools of language, number, and logic. Revealing insights are given into manner which language functions as an instrument of thought. The theories presented are anchored practice, empirical research from which they derive and practical applications to which they can be put. The latter are exemplified incidentally throughout and extensively detailed descriptions of two courses Mr. Bruner has helped to construct and to teach--an experimental mathematics course and a multifaceted course social studies. In both, students' encounters with material to be mastered are structured and sequenced such a way as to work with, and to reinforce, developmental process. Written with all style and e lan that readers have come to expect of Mr. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction is charged with provocative suggestions and inquiries of one of great innovators field of education.