Plain English Meaning

A well-known psychologist whose ideas shaped how instructors teach. He argued that students learn best by actively building on what they already know, by being shown things, and by returning to the same topic repeatedly at deeper levels.

Full Definition

Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) was an American psychologist whose work on cognitive learning theory influenced modern instructional design. He proposed that learners construct new knowledge by building on what they already know, and he introduced the concept of the spiral curriculum — the idea that subjects should be revisited at progressively deeper levels as the learner matures. He also identified three modes of representing knowledge: enactive (learning by doing), iconic (learning through images), and symbolic (learning through language and abstract symbols).

Context Anchor

Seen in the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook in discussions of cognitive theory and how flight instructors help students form real instead of only memorizing facts.