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The core focus of this research centered on the intricate relationship between mentalization, the fundamental mental process underlying social interactions, and the narrative approach proposed by Bruner. Mentalization, encompassing both implicit and explicit interpretations of one’s and others’ actions, plays a pivotal role in shaping the complexity of social interactions. Concurrently, the narrative approach, as elucidated by Bruner, serves as the primary interpretative and cognitive tool through which individuals derive meaning from their experiences. Narrative, in essence, empowers individuals to imbue their experiences with significance, constructing knowledge and enabling a reinterpretation of their lives by reconstructing the meanings attached to events. This intertwining of mentalization and the narrative approach is particularly salient, given their shared reliance on autobiographical narratives and the inference of mental states. In the context of this study, our primary objective was to explore how practical and theoretical activities, rooted in the re-elaboration of personal life information and events, could serve as a catalyst for enhancing mentalization skills. By engaging students in activities specifically designed to encourage the reinterpretation of their life experiences, we aimed to bolster their ability to infer mental states effectively. These enhanced mentalization skills, we hypothesized, form the foundational basis for executing complex educational tasks rooted in constructed teaching methodologies. In summary, this research serves as a pioneering exploration into the synergistic interrelation of mentalization and the narrative approach, offering valuable insights for educators and practitioners aiming to foster enhanced social cognition and enriched educational experiences.

Based on the assumption that the process of understanding is partly narrative, this study explores the potential benefits and limitations of using narrative writing in biology education. We investigate what contribution a student-centered narrative intervention can make to the conceptual understanding of protein biosynthesis in the context of viral infections and virus replication. After a teaching sequence on this topic, 68 secondary school students (M = 15.7 years, SD = 0.57 years) explained virus replication in a written text. One subsample (n = 46) was instructed to write a narrative text, while the other one (n = 22) was asked to write an expository (non-fictional) text. Our data analysis encompassed an analysis of the structural narrativity in the student texts, as well as a concept-related rating of the level of scientific correctness in three categories. A post-test questionnaire (35 items) was used to depict the learners’ viewpoints on their respective text production and the learning process that they experienced. Our findings indicate that most learners actually produced the text type they were supposed to, with exceptions in both sub-samples. As to the level of concept-related scientific correctness, we found no major differences between the two interventions. However, for two concepts, compartmentalization and levels of organization, the data indicate the significant advantage of the narrative intervention. We conclude from our results that to some extent, the effective learning properties of narrative texts, derived from the theoretical foundations, could indeed successfully be demonstrated in the field of virus replication. However, narrative text production is not equally beneficial for all aspects of the biological topic, and it also poses specific problems for some learners.

Jerome Seymour Bruner helped to launch the cognitive revolution in psychology - the shift from focusing on how stimuli or rewards provoke behaviours (behaviourism) to trying to understand the workings of the mind.

Rainbows in Eastern African folktales: Oral narrative as ecocritical model The rainbow makes for strong imagery: throughout world history, the rainbow has functioned in many ways as a tool to think with. This is no different in African contexts. Our aim in this paper is to explore the changing meanings given to relations between rainbows and snakes in narratives from the Gikuyu language in Central Kenya. We thereby remain open to the wider East African context, indicating the multiple meaning-making of rainbows in ecological terms. This diachronic approach to narratives allows us to show how rainbow imagery formed a model that interpreted human/nonhuman relations long before the current global ecological crisis was recognised in developmental circles. In our narrative analysis, we argue that connections were drawn between rainbows and snakes, and in turn between humans and entities like rainbows and snakes. The moral evaluation of rainbow-snakes was ambivalent: they could be dangerous, and they could be good; they could be destructive, and they could be enabling. Analysing the narratives left us with a new perspective on the evaluation of human characters and the rainbow-snake: it could treat humans badly, but humans could also treat the rainbow-snake badly. We furthermore show that in the course of the colonial era, this symbolism changed, and the rainbow-snake as an ecocritical model disappeared in the process: the connection between snake and rainbow disappeared, and the ambivalence of the imagery got lost. Good and bad became clearly distinguishable and inherent: it no longer depended on the way of interacting with the entity. Our diachronic interpretation does not form a call to do away with current images and go back to an assumed romantic, pristine African past. Yet it may be wise to reflect on what imaginative history can teach us, and to learn from narratives in history as a way to overcome the exclusive focus on logical-scientific thinking, arriving at a less anthropocentric interpretative model through narrative thinking. Our analysis points out that these East African oral narratives may be instructive in the context of the current global ecological crisis. Keywords: Rainbows, folktales, Gikuyu, East Africa, ecocriticism.

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative turn within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner’s theory of narrative as a specific ‘mode of knowing’ was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to study narratives ‘at their far reach’—as an art form—and on several occasions he refers to the dramatistic pentad as an important method for ‘unpacking’ narratives. The pentad proposed by Bruner to study narratives was developed by the American philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke and is embedded in his general linguistic theory of dramatism . From an educational perspective Bruner’s reference to the work of Burke has not been elaborated upon thus far. In this paper we aim to take Bruner’s suggestion at hand and explore how his educational theory of narrative as a mode of knowing can indeed be enriched by Kenneth Burke’s theory and method of dramatism. We claim that specifically the rhetorical framework that is developed by dramatism offers an important perspective about perspectives for education in a context that is increasingly confronted with a plurality of interpretive frameworks.

This article investigates the development of new teaching ideologies in the context of the technocratic ideology of the Cold War. These ideologies did not simply vanish after 1989. The catchwords were \"programmed instruction\" and \"teaching machines\" accompanied by the promise that all students would make efficient learning progress. Although Eastern and Western states fought the Cold War over political ideologies, their teaching ideologies (perhaps surprisingly) converged. This may explain why neither the apparent failure of these educational ideologies nor the end of the Cold War led to the modification of the ideologies themselves, but rather to the modification of devices serving the ideologies.

In the present article, I criticize the narrow-minded definitions of validity as done by mainstream psychology and its quantitative imperative. I argue that validity should be defined in a broader way such as enhancing the transparency of a present scientific inquiry. The consequence of a too narrow-minded focus upon validity is that specific psychological phenomena are bracketed, and its analysis is argued as non-valid or non-scientific. Psychological phenomena such as watching television, going to sleep, and talking to friends—among many others—are part and parcel of human everyday life. For such phenomena, we are not able to control variables or a specific setting. Yet, I argue that this is not necessary as we can unravel those psychological mechanisms within a different scientific lens that I call a cultural Alltagspsychologie (folk psychology) in tradition of Jerome Bruner. This Alltagspsychologie analyzes a person’s individual social relatedness in time that is argued to demonstrate his/her personal culture and accounts for his/her relations with his environment as well as with himself/herself. Analyzing this relatedness is possible by the TEM diagrams that can decipher the development of culture from past to future and show equally potential alterations of exactly that culture. In the end, I argue that such a scientific approach can be also called valid.

Sandra Smidt takes the reader on a journey through the key concepts of Jerome Bruner, a significant figure in the field of early education whose work has spanned almost a century. His wide-ranging and innovative principles of early learning and teaching are unpicked here using everyday language and the links between his ideas and those of other key thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are revealed. Introducing Bruner is the companion volume to Introducing Vygotsky and is an invaluable work for anyone involved with children in the early years. The introduction of Bruner's key concepts is followed by discussion of the implications of these for teaching and learning. This accessible text is illustrated throughout with examples drawn from real-life early years settings and the concepts discussed include: how children acquire language how children come to make sense of their world through narrative the significance of play to learning the importance of culture and context the role of memory what should children be taught: the spiral curriculum how should children be taught: scaffolding and interaction. The book also looks, crucially, at what those working or involved with young children can learn from Bruner, and includes a helpful glossary of terminology. This fascinating insight in to the life and work of a key figure in early years education is essential reading for anyone concerned with the learning and development of young children.