Bruner’s Modes of Cognitive Representation and My Son

I read about two great people Jerome S. Bruner and Lev S. Vygotsky yesterday. I always thought the aim of education is for improving our knowledge. However, Bruner says “The aim of education is to make the learner, as autonomous and self-propelled a thinker as possible” (Bruner, 1961, p. 23). I am changing my thoughts about education now.

My small son is learning to play piano. His elder brother is his trainer. I think he learned lot within a short period of time. Today I confirmed with my small son how much he learned. In the beginning he tried to explain what he learned. Then slowly he moved to the piano and started playing it. I recognized that he is trying to represent his understanding through motor responses. Or represents the past event of learning piano through appropriate motor response, which is playing. This is Enactive mode of cognitive representation.

I asked him to play more for me. He started to play music from his book. His piano book is having all the instructions. The diagrams, pictures and other instructions, generally called icons, helps him to play the music. The music in his mind is in the form of icons. This is Iconic mode of cognitive representation.

For him the music notations are the symbol by which he can encode and represent his experience. There are other symbols like the piano or the music book. The symbol system represents things by design feature that include remoteness and arbitrariness. This is symbolic mode of cognitive representation.

My son uses all the three mode of cognitive representations to learn the music. Using all the three modes is time consuming. However, that gives my son a deep understanding of concept and the ability to apply it appropriately in many contexts.

Reference: Driscoll, M (2005). Psychology of Learning For Instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.