1. DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES
JEROME BRUNER
Practice II: Didactics of English as EFL
Byrne, Laureana
Scaricaciottoli, Sofia
2012

2. JEROME BRUNER
Jerome Seymour Bruner (born
October 1, 1915) is an American
psychologist who has made
significant contributions to human
cognitive psychology and cognitive
learning theory in educational
psychology, as well as to history
and to the general philosophy of
education. Bruner is currently a
senior research fellow at the New
York University School of Law. He
received his B.A. in 1937 from Duke
University and his Ph. D. from
Harvard University in 1941.

3. BRUNER’S IDEAS ARE GREATLY INFLUENCED BY
PIAGET’S THEORY ABOUT DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES.
LANGUAGE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL FOR
COGNITIVE GROWTH
Bruner’s ideas:
Scaffolding
Formats and routines
The spiral curriculum
Important influences in education and language
teaching.

4. SCAFFOLDING
A cognitive support that an adult or a more able
peer can give to a child so that he/she should
develop and grow. E.g.: being a model or simplifying
tasks.
Good scaffolding is tuned to the needs of the child
and adjusted as the child becomes more
competent.
Scaffolding has been transferred to the classroom
and teacher-pupil talk.

5. SCAFFOLDING
Wood (1998) suggests that teachers can scaffold
children’s learning in various ways:
Teachers can help children to By
Attend to what is relevant Suggesting
Praising the significant
Provinding focusing activities
Adopt useful strategies Encouraging rehearsal
Being explicit about organization
Remember the whole task and Remainding
goals Modelling
Providing part-whole activities

6. FORMATS AND ROUTINES
These are features of events that aloud scaffolding
to take place.
Useful idea for language teaching: children learn
through routines.
As routines are repeated, children are able to
gradually assume more control and responsability.
A useful example of a routine is of parents reading
stories to their children from babyhood onwards.

7. FORMATS AND ROUTINES
The importance of routines is linked to the role of
stories or narratives in language classrooms.
Language use is preditable within the routines.
There is a space within which the child can take
over and do the language him/herself.
This space for growth matches the child’s Zone of
Proximal Development.
According to Bruner, these routines and their
adjustments provide an important site for language
and cognitive development and language skills.

8. ROUTINES IN THE LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
Routines which happen every day may provide
opprtunities for language development.
The context created by routines provides an
opportunity for pupils to predict meaning and
intention.
Routines offer a way to add variation and
novelty that can involve more complex language.
As this occurs, the situation helps children to
continue understanding.

9. SPIRAL CURRICULUM
Also called recycling.
Bruner believes that children learn when they
are exposed to a subject many times in different
ways.
In this way, teachers move from basic concepts
to more complex ones over time.
This theory is the basis for the way most school
curricula and text books are organized.

10. REFERENCES
1.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bruner (last
retrieved 30/5/12)
2.- Understanding how children learn, Section B:
Children development. August, 2010. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited, Longman
3.- Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to
young learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.