Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruners theoretical basis is similar in a way to Vygotsky in the sense that he wants individuals to be able to develop "beyond the information that is given"http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html. So the individual develops not only their schema but the added benefits of developing in an individually creative way (which I find is great for individual confidence and self-esteem, and of course the courage to keep trying to learn).
"Bruner (1966) states that a theory of instruction should address four major aspects: (1) predisposition towards learning, (2) the ways in which a body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner, (3) the most effective sequences in which to present material, and (4) the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments. Good methods for structuring knowledge should result in simplifying, generating new propositions, and increasing the manipulation of information".http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html. Lets look at aspect No1, it runs along a parallel with the other constructivists on "how they learn". Aspect No2 I can see Gardner's Multiple Intelligences being used effectively here. Aspect No3 suggests similar mental pictures to me of Bloom's Taxonomy, ans I use this a bit loosely because i can feel the differences between the two. I will try to explain what I mean more fully with an example."
His approach was characterised by three stages which he calls enactive, iconic and symbolic and are solidly based on the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. The first, the enactive level, is where the child manipulate materials directly. Then he proceed to the iconic level, where he deals with mental images of objects but does not manipulate them directly. At last he moves to the symbolic level, where he is strictly manipulating symbols and no longer mental images or objects. The optimum learning process should according to Bruner go through these stages.

In 1960, Bruner (then a professor of Harvard University) proposed a “spiral curriculum” concept to facilitate structuring a curriculum ´around the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members´ (Bruner, 1960). The next decades many school system educators attempted to implement this concept into their curriculum. Bruner (1975) described the principles behind the spiral curriculum in the following way:

”…I was struck by the fact that successful efforts to teach highly structured bodies of knowledge like mathematics, physical sciences, and even the field of history often took the form of metaphoric spiral in which at some simple level a set of ideas or operations were introduced in a rather intuitive way and, once mastered in that spirit, were then revisited and reconstructed in a more formal or operational way, then being connected with other knowledge, the mastery at this stage then being carried one step higher to a new level of formal or operational rigour and to a broader level of abstraction and comprehensiveness. The end stage of this process was eventual mastery of the connexity and structure of a large body of knowledge”…(p.3-4). http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm
I have included this large slab of text because it showed me clearly the way I could teach visual arts to a wide range of ages and abilities in students. Teaching a creative skills based subject allows a topic to be introduced in an intuitive way, once you have a grasp and hold on the spirit of the topic you can then introduce the formal or operational way which might relate to a skill or a observation process or a textually based process. Then the development of all this information into the scaffolding of comprehension of the artist, their society, their practice, the world, the audience, meanings of then and now, etc, etc.


http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm
http://web.lemoyne.edu/~hevern/nr-theorists/bruner_jerome_s.html