Jerome Bruner will always be remembered for being the driving force behind the Cognitive Revolution . This psychologist, born in the United States in 1915 and died in 2016, was one of the main figures of behavioral science in the 20th century.

D. from Harvard, he traced a line of research that was in direct opposition to the behavioral theses of B.F. Skinner, John B. Watson and others, developing his cognitive theory.

  • Biography of Jerome Bruner

Phrases and thoughts of Jerome Bruner

Very inspired by the works of Jean Piaget, Bruner also theorized about human learning, creating his theory of learning models.

In this article we will get to know Jerome Bruner a little better through several famous quotes and phrases that will allow us to get closer to the work of this phenomenal researcher.

1. It is easier for you to activate your feelings than for them to get you to take action.

The directionality of feelings and their influence on our daily lives.

2. Education should not only transmit culture, but also provide alternative world views and strengthen the will to explore them.

Critical thinking is one of the fundamental keys to learning. Without exploration there is no reflection.

3. “Students should not be bored in schools”

In an interesting interview that Bruner gave to El País, the American psychologist explained several keys about how schools should teach people to love knowledge.

4. I believe in a school that not only teaches children what we know about the world, but also teaches them to think about possibilities.

An education based on utopia, creativity and progress.

5. Do children learn religion? I have a very Anglo-Saxon mentality, I believe in the separation of Church and State.

On secularism in schools. His vision is clear and meridian.

6. Here as elsewhere, in addition to debate, education needs funding. It needs investment.

A realistic statement about education in the 21st century.

7. The essence of creativity is to use the knowledge we already have to try to go one step further.

About your concept of creativity.

8. Students should be encouraged to discover the world and relationships for themselves.

Learning and laissez-faire as the key to enhancing the pristine curiosity of each child.

9. We are “storytellers”, and since childhood we have acquired a language to explain these stories that we carry within us.

An interesting insight into why human beings communicate with a high degree of complexity, through language.

10. “Thinking about thinking” has to be the main ingredient for any empowering educational practice.

Metacognition teaches us to evaluate our thoughts and access higher levels of wisdom.

11. Learning is a process, not a product.

We never stop learning and reformulating our thoughts through sensory and psychic experience.

12. A child approaching a new problem is like a scientist researching at the edge of his natural field of study.

Outside the cognitive comfort zone we are all driven to find new and better ways to approach problems and solve unknowns.

13. The fish will be the last to discover the water.

An idea that brings us back to the idea of ubiquity: what surrounds us, sometimes, is precisely what goes unnoticed.

14. Good teachers always work at the limit of the students’ abilities.

Stimulating new skills and competencies is based on this principle described in this sentence by Jerome Bruner.

15. Understanding something in a way that is not impossible to understand in other ways.

It may sound obvious, but Jerome Bruner reminds us that reality has more than one reading.

16. The main feature of the game (for both adults and children) is not the content but the mode. In other words, play is a way of approaching an activity, not the activity itself.

A thought by Jerome Bruner that may make us think.

17. Knowledge is only useful when it is transformed into concrete habits.

If knowledge is not transported into daily activity, it is of little use.

18. There is a universal truth about human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is exceeded by the potential knowledge that remains in our environment. To cope with this diversity, human perception, memory and cognitive processes are governed by strategies that protect our limited capacity so that we are not overtaken by thousands of stimuli provided by the environment.

We tend to perceive things in a systematic and prototypical way: this helps us to understand and generalize, and therefore to survive in a highly complex world.