Theories of Piaget, Bruner, and Ausubel: Explications and Implications

A comparison of the major tenets shared by the three cognitive theories of Piaget, Bruner, and Ausubel, as well as variations in the description of cognitive development unique to each, provides a basis for a global phenomenological dialectical scheme of psychological development in the spirit of Werner. These theories represent points on a dimension from Piaget's particular organismic world-view to Ausubel's tendency towards a mechanistic orientation. Each theory, however, adopts a structuralist approach towards theory and explanation assuming qualitative change in structure over time. Cognitive growth is seen as qualitative changes in thought systems though the source of change is seen variously to be either the properties of the internal structural system itself or the organized system provided by the external environment. Each theory proposes a form of conflict resolution as a critical mechanism of change in thinking, though the form of such change-mechanisms varies from Piaget's stages of internal organization to Bruner's notion of external amplifiers and Ausubel's subsumption process. The unique and complementary implications these theories have for education are examined. It is proposed that fundamental similarities in accounting for cognitive growth suggest an integration of each special contribution is plausible and useful to educationalists. At the same time, a comparison of the unique and diverse viewpoints of intellectual development which each theory provides may serve to clarify by contrast the particular contribution of each to education.