I have to write my experience with this reading. I had to go to a "training session" for a large upcoming community event that involves a silent auction that raises a great deal of money. I am one of the people who helps with this auction by being an auctioneer of sorts. I've done this now for about 7 years and I know the procedures very well. But I still am required to go to this training. So I took my Bruner readings to the training session in an attempt to use valuable time productively. I settled into a large room with many others, all adults, and began reading as the trainer went through a Power Point and taught the procedures for this auction. I mostly tuned out the trainer and focused on my readings, but would occasionally look up just for some basic awareness.
The training was not going well. People were deeply confused. Now the trainer apparently was not a trained teacher (at least I hope not!). I began to contrast what the trainer was doing and what Bruner had written and could not help but notice that the trainer was violating every principle Bruner promoted. There was no attempt to predispose the audience to learn, no structure that I could find, the sequencing was disastrous with the trainer going back and forth, and the only intrinsic reward was the hope of avoiding looking like a fool. There was no enactive or iconic representations, even in the Power Point, only symbolic. The training should have lasted about 20 minutes but went on for about 75 minutes, because of no economy whatsoever.
I don't mean to pick on this trainer, but the contrast was remarkable. Now Bruner himself says that we really can't learn something well by showing what it is not. But I could not help but notice that good teaching is a rare thing outside of school. I also have no doubt I will be doing a great deal of on-the-spot training during this auction.
Another point I want to bring up out of the Bruner readings is the idea of vertical teaming in relation to the sequencing of our curriculum, the stages of enaction, iconic, and symbolic, and the interface of Piaget's stages of development. Vertical teaming is the idea that every high school department meets with the corresponding department of every middle school and elementary school that feeds into that high school. Imagine what could be the result if this could happen on a regular basis with every teacher understanding Bruner's and Piaget's ideas. One of the things high school teachers deal with is that we can't always teach on a high school level because the kids aren't always thinking on the high school level. Could vertical teaming change this? I don't know but I would like to try it.
Another point I really liked in Bruner is the idea that, "giving the material to them [students] in terms they understand... turns out to involve knowing the mathematics oneself, and the better one knows it, the better it can be taught." Amen and Amen. And this applies to every subject. No one can teach what they do not know and know very well. And, I would add, knowing how to teach what they know. Knowledge of subject is essential; knowledge of how to teach that subject is just as essential.
