10
KEIICHI TAKAYA
He has always appreciated the significan
ce of “meta”-cognition, that
is, being conscious of how one’s own mind works in knowing, thinking,
and learning. Or, put slightly differently, being able to look at oneself
(one’s knowledge, thought, and cultural values) from another’s point of
view. For example, he explains discovery learning in the following way:
“Discovery teaching generally involves not so much the process of
leading students to discover what is ‘out
there,’ but rather, their
discovering what is in their own heads” (Bruner, 1971, p. 72).
From the 1950s to the 1970s,
Bruner favored such concepts as
structure, discovery
, and
intuitive t
hinking
– after the 1980s, he used
such concepts as
culture, meaning-making, narrative,
and
inter-
subjectivity
much more often. The change in his favored concepts seems
to come from his epistemological changes; he now seems to dispense
with the clear-cut separation between individuals and culture which we
find in his earlier writings. Consequently, he seems to be less concerned
with the idea of education as an individualized process, and that of
learning as an exclusively individual achievement.
In
The Culture of Education
(1996), Bruner reflects on the way he
thought three decades ago. “It now seems to me in retrospect, some
three decades later, that I was
then much too preoccupied with solo,
intrapsychic processes of knowing
and how these might be assisted by
appropriate pedagogies” (Preface, p, xi). Also he said, looking back on
the Head Start Program, that the conception of “deprivation” was based
on the notion of the mind as
tabula rasa
(p. 80).
So, how do these changes affect his educational theory? I think that
an example can be seen in the following remark in
Culture
; “Now, school
is a culture itself, not just a ‘preparation’ for it, a warming up” (1996, p.
98).
Along with his point about the departure from “solo” psychology, a
departure from “preparation” seems significant. We have to examine
two points about his earlier view.
Bruner was, from the early stages of his career, influenced most
notably by Vygotsky, and was interested in the way culture shapes the
human mind. This has been consistent from the time he emphasized
such concepts as structure though he was, at that time, more concerned
with (a) what individuals acquired, or what they become able to do, as
a result of education; and (b) the objective nature of the structure of
knowledge. His shift of focus from indiv
idual to communal (or, his
departure from “so
lo”), and from objective/subjective to “intersubjective”
can be seen in some of his works even in the 1970s. For example, he
JEROME BRUNER’S THEORY OF EDUCATION
11
wrote, “man’s intellect then is not
simply
his
own,
but is
communal
in
the sense that its unlocking or empowering depends upon the success of
the culture in developing means to that end” [italics added] (1971, p. 7).
He said that
though essentialism or
realism, in which the self is
thought of as something
like substance
or essence, was dominant in
psychology, alternative views of the self had already existed in other
areas such as cultural anthropology and philosophy.
13
According to one
such alternative viewpoint, a “proper person is better conceived ... not
as the pure and enduring nucleus but [as] the sum and swarm of
participations” (1990, p. 107). Bruner,
in psychology and education,
introduced this conception of rela
tion (or mutual dependency) between
the human mind (or the self) and the culture. His departure
from his
earlier “solo” orientation became apparent in the 1980s and 1990s. He
wrote, “it is man’s participation
in
culture and the realization of his
mental powers
through
culture that make it impossible to construct a
human psychology on the
basis of the individual alone” (p. 12). He also
said, “to treat the world as an indifferent flow of information to be
processed by individuals each on his or her own terms is to lose sight of
how individuals are formed and how they function” (p. 12).
Bruner’s critical view of solo-epistemology was not sophisticated or
forceful enough in the early years, and the temperament surrounding
education (whether in terms of theory or of public concern) was not
ready for it. In any case it did not catch educators’ attention in those
decades; whatever Bruner’s intention might have been, his emphasis on
such things as “the structure of the discipline” and “discovery” did not
force people to give up the epistemological position that would treat the
world as an indifferent flow of information. His ideas, on the one hand,
allowed people to feel that they did not have to give up the legacy of
progressivism which treasures spontaneity, excitement, and joy of
childhood in the process of education (because of Bruner’s emphasis on
active participation in learning), while, on the other hand, assured them
that academic excellence by th