The American psychologist, Jerome Bruner, put forward a theory of children’s intellectual development in which he distinguished three sequential modes of representing experience. First, the enactive mode during which a child experienced the world by means of purely motor responses; second, the iconic, which involved pictorial images or models; and, third, the symbolic, which involved language or abstract formulae. An example that is often given to illustrate these three modes is that of ‘balance’.
At a very early stage of intellectual development, a child might experience balance in terms of a see-saw—the enactive mode. Later he/she might understand some of the principles of balance by looking at various pictures and diagrams—the iconic mode. Finally, he/she might be able to make calculations about various kinds of balance by purely mathematical formulae—the symbolic mode. Bruner’s modes clearly have much in common with Piaget’s stages of development, but some teachers have found them to be more useful in classroom planning. (See also Piagetian, stages of development)
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