杰罗姆·S·布鲁纳,他塑造了对年轻人心智的理解。享年100岁
BENEDICT CAREYJUNE 8, 2016 /NYT
行为主义的对心智研究的控制。Sue Klemens和美联社称赞布鲁纳,他以认知革命著称,他的理论包括知觉、儿童发展以及形成学习形成的教育政策,并帮助推动了当代创造性问题解决研究,布鲁纳于2016年6月5日星期日在曼哈顿的家中去世。
杰罗姆·S·布鲁纳的工作在1983年帮助打破了他的合作者Eleanor M. Fox确认了他的死讯。
在1940年代,布鲁纳博士是哈佛大学的一个研究者,他无法忍受当时广为流传的行为主义思想,在巴普洛夫著名的狗的实验中,在进餐和流涎之前的铃声的刺激和反应,被认为是学习基础。
布鲁纳博士认为植根于动物实验的行为主义,忽视了人类心智经验的诸多维度。在1947年的一个实验中,他发现,来自低收入家庭的孩子认为一个硬币比实际要大,他们的欲望显然不仅塑造了他们的思想,同时也塑造他们所见之物的物理尺寸。
为了建立一个更完整的理论,他和实验学家乔治·A·米勒,他哈佛的同事,建立了认知研究中心,这个中心支持研究人类思想的内在工作方式。
后来,从行为到信息处理过程这种的转变被称为认知革命。
哈佛大学心理学教授加德纳·霍华德说:“他是一个大有可为的心理学家。“他在别人的身后打开了一扇心门,然后又转移到了另一种不同的领域。”
加德纳博士补充说,“他是自杜威之后教育思想最重要的贡献者——但是今天,没有人像他那样(贡献卓越)。”
布鲁纳博士的工作使他成为了发展和教育方面广受欢迎的专家。在上世纪50年代后期,在苏联发射了人造地球卫星,太空中的第一颗卫星之后,官员和著名的教育家呼吁对教育更深的承诺,尤其是在科学领域。
1959年联邦科学机构召集顶尖学者在马萨诸塞州的伍兹霍尔对头脑风暴和可能的改革进行了一场会议。布鲁纳博士,也参加了这次会议,在“教育过程”(1960)中总结了与会者的意见,这本书迅速成为了教育改革和理论的里程碑式的文本。
“我们将从这一假设开始:任何科目都能够按照某种正确的方式,教给任何年龄阶段的任何儿童。”布鲁纳博士写的这段话在教育界成为了最为广泛引用的一段话。
会议上出现的一个想法是“螺旋式课程”,在这一想法中,教师以年龄适当的语言向学生介绍早期的主题,并在随后的几年中增加深度和复杂性,重新审视相同的主题。许多学区已经从小学开始融入了这种方法。
后来,布鲁纳博士在伍兹霍尔的实验中,帮助设计开端计划(Head Start),这项计划由联邦计划于1965推出,以提高学前教育的发展。
布鲁纳博士1972年进入了牛津大学,在那里,总是不安于智力安定,他开始认为,认知心理学应该扩展,以包括同样塑造了人们理解世界意义策略的叙事建构和文化。
布鲁纳以前的一个学生,洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学心理学教授Patricia Greenfield说:“通过杰罗姆布鲁纳、认知革命在美国和世界各地冲击了教育思想。”
杰罗姆·西摩·布鲁纳于1915年10月1日出生在曼哈顿,他是Herman和 Rose Bruner的三个孩子中最小的一个,布鲁纳父母是波兰移民。他的父亲是一个钟表匠,他还有其他的一些工作,他的母亲管理着家庭。他还有一个同父异母的哥哥。
布鲁纳出生时因白内障失明,他在2岁时通过手术重新获得了视力。朋友们说,布鲁纳从未忘记突然获得的视力和色彩,并指引他后来的关于心智如何塑造知觉的思想。所以,他也做了社会的适应:在布鲁纳12岁时他的父亲去世了,她的母亲搬家到了佛罗里达州,他在那里一些高中中就学。
婚姻,这次婚姻以离婚告终。他的第三个妻子, Carol Feldman,在他之前去世。
布鲁纳博士毕业于杜克大学,在1937年获得了心理学博士学位,在进入哈佛大学的博士项目之前,他遇到了他的第一任妻子,Katherine Frost,正如他的第二次纽约大学法学院的教授,福克斯博士,布鲁纳博士幸存的儿子之一,和他的一个女儿,Jane Bruner Mullane,他第一次婚姻女儿,除了他们之外,布鲁纳还有三个孙儿。
布鲁纳博士在教育和心理学领域,写了/合著了十几本有影响的书籍,并荣获了很多的奖项。在上世纪90年代,他成了教育大使,在意大利博洛尼亚旁边的瑞吉欧(Reggio Emilia)小镇幼儿园工作,他也在其他地方工作。世界各地的许多幼儿园使用瑞吉欧方法,灵感来自布鲁纳博士在哪儿的工作。
他以纽约大学法学教授的身份结束了他的职业生涯,用他关于思想、文化和讲故事的思考来分析法律推理与处罚。他于2013年退休。
“他是一位人类学家,事实上,从未安逸于一个领域或一个理论”福克斯博士说。“他一直在寻找更广泛的联系。”
Jerome S. Bruner, Who Shaped Understanding of the Young Mind, Dies at 100
BENEDICT CAREYJUNE 8, 2016 /NYT
Jerome S. Bruner in 1983. His work helped break behaviorism’s hold on the study of the mind. Credit Sue Klemens/Associated Press Jerome S. Bruner, whose theories about perception, child development and learning informed education policy for generations and helped launch the modern study of creative problem solving, known as the cognitive revolution, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 100.
His death was confirmed by his partner, Eleanor M. Fox.
Dr. Bruner was a researcher at Harvard in the 1940s when he became impatient with behaviorism, then a widely held theory, which viewed learning in terms of stimulus and response: the chime of a bell before mealtime and salivation, in Ivan Pavlov’s famous dog experiments.
Dr. Bruner believed that behaviorism, rooted in animal experiments, ignored many dimensions of human mental experience. In one 1947 experiment, he found that children from low-income households perceived a coin to be larger than it actually was — their desires apparently shaping not only their thinking but also the physical dimensions of what they saw.
In subsequent work, he argued that the mind is not a passive learner — not a stimulus-response machine — but an active one, bringing a full complement of motives, instincts and intentions to shape comprehension, as well as perception. His writings — in particular the book “A Study of Thinking” (1956), written with Jacqueline J. Goodnow and George A. Austin — inspired a generation of psychologists and helped break the hold of behaviorism on the field.
To build a more complete theory, he and the experimentalist George A. Miller, a Harvard colleague, founded the Center for Cognitive Studies, which supported investigation into the inner workings of human thought.
Much later, this shift in focus from behavior to information processing came to be known as the cognitive revolution.
“He was a psychologist of possibilities,” said Howard Gardner, a professor of psychology at Harvard. “He opened one door of the mind after another, and then moved on to something different.”
Dr. Gardner added, “He was the most important contributor to educational thinking since John Dewey — and there is no one like him today.”
Dr. Bruner’s work made him a sought-after expert on development and education. In the late 1950s, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite in space, officials and prominent educators called for a deeper commitment to education, particularly in the sciences.
In 1959, federal science agencies convened a meeting of top scholars at Woods Hole, in Massachusetts, to brainstorm about possible reforms. Dr. Bruner, who ran the meeting, summarized participants’ views in “The Process of Education” (1960), a book that quickly became a landmark text in education reform and theory.
“We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any age of development,” Dr. Bruner wrote, in what would become one of the most widely quoted lines in education circles.
One idea that emerged from the meeting was the “spiral curriculum,” in which teachers introduce students to topics early, in age-appropriate language, and revisit the same subjects in subsequent years, adding depth and complexity. Many school districts have incorporated that approach, beginning in grade school.
Later, Dr. Bruner drew on his experience at Woods Hole to help design Head Start, the federal program introduced in 1965 to improve preschool development.