The Psychology Book

164

KNOWING

I S A P R O C E S S

NOT A PRODUCT

JEROME BRUNER (1915– )

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Cognitive development

BEFORE

1920s Lev Vygotsky develops

his theory that cognitive

development is a both a

social and a cultural process.

1936 Jean Piaget publishes

his developmental theories

in his book, Origins of

Intelligence in the Child.

AFTER

1960s The teaching program

“Man: A Course of Study

(MACOS),” based on Bruner’s

theories, is adopted in

schools in the US, the

UK, and Australia.

1977 Albert Bandura

publishes Social Learning

Theory, which looks at

development through a

mixture of behavioral

and cognitive aspects.

T

he field of developmental

psychology was dominated

throughout much of the

20th century by Jean Piaget, who

explained how a child’s thinking

develops and matures in stages,

as a result of a natural curiosity

to explore the environment. Lev

Vygotsky’s theory, which appeared

in English shortly after Piaget’s,

also claimed that a child finds

meaning through experience, but

widened the meaning of the word

“experience” to encompass cultural

and social experience. Children,

he said, learn mainly through

interaction with other people.

At this point in the 1960s, the

“cognitive revolution” was gaining

momentum; mental processes were

increasingly being explained by

the analogy of the brain as an

“information processor.” Jerome

Bruner was a key figure in this new

We learn things by

active experience.

Instructing someone is not

just telling them something

but encouraging them

to participate.

We acquire knowledge through the use of reasoning, by

constructing meaning from the information.

This is a form of information processing.

Knowing is a process, not a product.