Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner (born October 1, 1915, New York, New York, U.S.—died June 5, 2016, New York, New York) was an American psychologist and educator who developed theories on perception, learning, memory, and other aspects of cognition in young children that had a strong influence on the American educational system and helped launch the field of cognitive psychology.

Bruner’s father, a watch manufacturer, died when Bruner was 12 years old. Bruner studied at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (B.A., 1937), and then at Harvard University, where he received a doctorate in psychology in 1941. After serving as an expert on psychological warfare for the U.S. Army during World War II, Bruner returned to Harvard in 1945, becoming professor of psychology there (1952). From 1960 to 1972 he also directed the university’s Center for Cognitive Studies. He left Harvard to become professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford (1972–80). He later taught at the New School for Social Research, New York City, and at the New York University School of Law.

Bruner’s studies helped to introduce Jean Piaget’s concept of developmental stages of cognition into the classroom. His much-translated book The Process of Education (1960) was a powerful stimulus to the curriculum-reform movement of the period. In it he argued that any subject can be taught to any child at any stage of development, if it is presented in the proper manner. According to Bruner, all children have natural curiosity and a desire to become competent at various learning tasks; when a task as presented to them is too difficult, however, they become bored. A teacher must, therefore, present schoolwork at a level that challenges but does not overwhelm the child’s current developmental stage. Moreover, the task is best presented within a framework of structured interaction between teacher and child, one that makes use of and builds upon skills that the child has already acquired. Such frameworks, which Bruner referred to as “scaffolding,” facilitate learning by limiting the child’s choices, or “degrees of freedom,” in the learning process to a manageable domain. In addition, he championed the “spiral curriculum,” in which subjects are taught to students year after year at increasing levels of complexity. Bruner developed a social science curriculum that was widely used during the 1960s and ’70s. He also studied perception in children, concluding that children’s individual values significantly affect their perceptions.

Bruner published extensively. His other major works include Mandate from the People (1944), A Study of Thinking (1956, with Jacqueline J. Goodnow and George A. Austin), On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (1962), Toward a Theory of Instruction (1966), Processes of Cognitive Growth: Infancy (1968), The Relevance of Education (1971), Communication as Language (1982), Child’s Talk (1983), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986), Acts of Meaning (1990), The Culture of Education (1996), Minding the Law (2000), and Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (2002).