Critical Research on Bruner's EIS Theory

Bruner의 EIS 이론에 대한 비판적 고찰

In this thesis, I examined Bruner's EIS theory from the viewpoint of epistemology based on Piaget's genetic epistemology. Although Bruner's ideal thought which insisted ‘to teach the structure’accepted Piaget's theory in the methodology of realization, it is different from Piaget in understanding knowledge. The difference is shown from understanding the meaning of ‘structure’. Piaget's concept of structure is something that has overcome the realistic viewpoint of the traditional epistemology and is reconstructed through endless self-regulative transformational process. However Bruner's is used as a realistic meaning as we can see in the Plato's recollection theory. Therefore Piaget's ‘stage of development’means the difference of structure which lies in the generative process and it includes the qualitive difference of level. On the other hand, Bruner, who is trying to translate and suggest the fixed structure to the children understood Piaget's stage of development as the difference in the ways of representation. Piaget's operational constructivism insists that the children should ‘construct’the knowledge through their activity, and especially in case of the lohico-mathematical recognition, the source should be internalized activity, that is, operation. In view of this assertion, Burner's idea which insists to accept the structure of knowledge as a fixed reality and to suggest the translated representation proper to the cognitive structure of the children to teach them, has a danger of emphasizing only the functional aspects to deliver the given knowledge ‘quickly’. And it also has the danger of damaging ‘the nature of the knowledge’in the translated knowledge.