from pp. 90-91 in King, Arthur R., and John Arnold Brownell. The Curriculum and the Disciplines of Knowledge; a Theory of Curriculum Practice. New York: Wiley, 1966.

 

The Bruner thesis states that the “curriculum of a subject should be determined by the most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of the underlying principles that give structure to that subject.”* Bruner hypothesizes that the principle is the basis for the early success of new curricula in mathematics and the sciences.*

Bruner hypothesizes that learning structures of disciplines:

• Is learning how things are related.
• Makes a subject more comprehensible.
• Slows forgetting.
• Permits reconstruction of detail through patterns.
• Is the main road to transfer of training.
• Narrows the gap between advanced and elementary knowledge.
• Leads to intellectual excitement.
• Supplies bases for and enhances intuitive thinking,
• Is the bridge to simplicity. (Therefore structures can be taught to anybody in some honest form.)
• Provides a path for progression of learning in each discipline.*

Bruner makes a compelling assertion that teaching “that emphasizes the structure of a subject is probably even more valuable for the less able student than for the gifted one.”*

 

*footnotes omitted