Modes of representation is Jerome Bruner's account of the three ways a learner can mentally represent a task or a body of knowledge: enactive, through action; iconic, through images; and symbolic, through language. Bruner treated the three modes as loosely sequential and constantly translating into one another rather than as strictly separated developmental stages, describing symbolic representation as the most advanced and, in his own words, the most mysterious of the three. He argued that when facing new material, a learner of any age, including an adult, benefits from moving from enactive to iconic to symbolic representation, and departed from stage theorists such as Piaget by holding that a learner at any age is capable of grasping material of real complexity provided the instruction is organized appropriately.
Facts
Core ClaimModes of representation holds that learners mentally represent a task or body of knowledge in three ways, enactive through action, iconic through images and symbolic through language, and that new material is best approached by moving from enactive to iconic to symbolic representation. 1 Sources
1. Jerome Bruner (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationEducational psychology section
In 1966, Bruner published another book relevant to education, Towards a Theory of Instruction, and then in 1973, another book, The Relevance of Education.
Developmental psychology section
Bruner suggested that students may experience, or "represent" tasks in three ways: enactive representation (action-based), iconic representation (image-based), and symbolic representation (language-based).
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