Education and Enlightenment

Jerome Seymour Bruner  (October 1, 1915 – June 5, 2016) was an American  psychologist  who made significant contributions to human  cognitive psychology  and  cognitive   learning theory  in  educational psychology . Discovery learning is an inquiry-based, constructivist learning theory that takes place in problem solving situations where the learner draws on his or her own past experience and existing knowledge to discover facts and relationships and new truths to be learned[1]. Students interact with the world by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments. As a result, students may be more more likely to remember concepts and knowledge discovered on their own (in contrast to a transmissionist model)[2]. Models that are based upon discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, incidental learning, among others. The theory is closely relat

In the early 1960's, Robert Karplus proposed a teaching/learning model for instruction based upon the work of Piaget. This cycle was later used in the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS), where it represented a systematic application of psychology to science education materials. A number of different models of instruction are conducive to fostering a constructivist approach in the classroom.  Among them is the 5 E's model. The following sections contain a description of the five phases (5E's) of this instructional model. Teacher and student lessons follow the Five E teaching/learning cycle. Engagement The first phase (the first E) is designed to actively engage the student in the learning task. The student mentally focuses on an object, problem, situation, or event that can be related to the world of the learner.The activities of this phase make connections to past and future activities. The connections depend on the learning task and may be conceptual, proced

Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) observed his children (and their process of making sense of the world around them) and eventually developed a four-stage model of how the mind processes new information encountered. He posited that children progress through 4 stages and that they all do so in the same order.  These four stages are: SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (BIRTH TO 2 YEARS OLD) The infant builds an understanding of himself or herself and reality (and how things work) through interactions with the environment. It is able to differentiate between itself and other objects. Learning takes place via assimilation (the organization of information and absorbing it into existing schema) and accommodation (when an object cannot be assimilated and the schemata have to be modified to include the object. PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (AGES 2 TO 4) The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. Objects are classified in simple w

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory is the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). Vygotsky’s work was largely unkown to the West until it was published in 1962. Vygotsky’s theory is one of the foundations of constructivism. It asserts three major themes regarding social interaction, the more knowledgeable other, and the zone of proximal development. Social Development Theory argues that social interaction precedes development; consciousness and cognition are the end product of socialization and social behavior. SOCIAL INTERACTION Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. In contrast to Jean Piaget’s understanding of child development (in which development necessarily precedes learning), Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development. He states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychologi

Constructivism as a paradigm or worldview posits that learning is an active, constructive process. The learner is an information constructor. People actively construct or create their own subjective representations of objective reality. New information is linked to to prior knowledge, thus mental representations are subjective. A reaction to didactic approaches such as behaviorism and programmed instruction, constructivism states that learning is an active, contextualized process of constructing knowledge rather than acquiring it. Knowledge is constructed based on personal experiences and hypotheses of the environment. Learners continuously test these hypotheses through social negotiation. Each person has a different interpretation and construction of knowledge process. The learner is not a blank slate (tabula rasa) but brings past experiences and cultural factors to a situation. NOTE: A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell stud

"Education" has been derived from the Latin term "Educatum" which means the act of teaching or training. A group of educationists say that it has come from another Latin word "Educare" which means "to bring up" or "to raise". According to a few others, the word "Education" has originated from another Latin term "Educere" which means "to lead forth" or "to come out". All these meanings indicate that education seeks to nourish the good qualities in man and draw out the best in every individual. Education seeks to develop the innate inner capacities of man. By educating an individual we attempt to give him/her some desirable knowledge, understanding, skills, interests, attitudes and critical 'thinking. That is, he acquires knowledge of history, geography, arithmetic, languages and sciences. Rote learning  is a  memorization  technique based on  repetition . The idea is that one will be ab