Toward a Theory of Instruction

Jerome Bruner

    Though good sense on the subject of education is not quite in the man-bites-dog category, it is sufficiently rare to be newsworthy. When it appears in conjunction with cogency, insight, wisdom and style, as it does in Jerome Bruner's book, the result is a heady mixture...What makes this book particularly rewarding is the quality of [Bruner's] insights--for example, he speaks of language as a calculus of thought. What makes his book important is the heightened spirit of ferment that it is bound to bring education.
       --Banesh Hoffmann, New York Times Book Review

    Gracefully written, lucid, and, uniquely among contemporary commentaries on education, never shrill. Bruner sketches out a theory of human development and a theory of instruction, he writes of education as a product of cultural evolution and of cultural evolution as a course of study for children, he rehearses strong opinions about the relation between English style and thinking and about the nature of 'the will to learn,' he presents some beguiling observations on children with learning blocks, and, despite the range that he covers, he manages a certain thematic unity... Bruner raises issues of great consequence.
       --William Kessen, Science

    [Bruner] has contributed with such wise ingenuity to the improvement of American education...[His] book is a mosaic of essays arranged with compassionate skill, speaking out of the great tradition of William James. No teacher of any child at any age can afford not to know this book well.
       --Frank G. Jennings, The Progressive

    Stimulating and provoking.
       --John Nisbet

  • Cover: Toward a Theory of Instruction
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Jerome Bruner is University Professor at New York University and the author of many books, including Acts of Meaning; On Knowing; The Process of Education; and Toward a Theory of Instruction (all published by Harvard).