A quick yet comprehensive explanation about the Cone of Experience and Bruner's 3 Tiered Experiences.

2. The Cone of Experience is a visual model, a pictorial device that presents
bands of experiences arranged according to degree of abstraction and not
degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom of the cone, the more
abstract the experience becomes.

3. These are first hand experiences which serve as the foundation of our learning.
We build up our reservoir of meaningful information and ideas through seeing,
hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Learning-by-doing.

4. In here, we make use of representative models or mock ups of reality for
practical reasons and so that we can make the real life accessible to the
students’ perception and understanding.

5. By dramatization, we participate in a reconstructed experience, even though
the original event is far removed from us in time.

6. It is a visualized explanation of an important fact, idea or process by the use of
photographs, drawings, films, displays or guided motions. It is showing how
things are done.

7. These are excursions and visits conducted to observe an event that is
unavailable within the classroom.

8. These are displays to be seen by spectators. They may consist of working models
arranged meaningfully or photographs with models, charts and posters. Sometimes
exhibits are “for your eyes only”. There are some exhibits however, that include
sensory experiences where spectators are allowed to touch or manipulate models
displayed.

9. Television and motion pictures can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that
we are made to feel we are there. The unique value of the messages communicated by
film and TV lies in their feeling of realism, their emphasis on persons and personality,
their organized presentation and their ability to select, dramatize, highlight and clarify.

10. These are visuals and auditory devices that may be used by an individual or a
group. Still pictures lack the sound and motion of a sound film. The radio
broadcast of an actual event may often be likened to a television broadcast
minus its visual dimensions.

11. These are no longer realistic reproduction of physical things for these are
highly abstract representations. Examples are charts, graphs, maps and
diagrams.

12. They are not like the objects or ideas for which they stand. They usually do not
contain visual clues to their meaning. Written words fall under this category. It
may be a word for a concrete object (book), an idea (freedom of speech), a
scientific principle or formula (e=mc2).

13. 3
2
1
Harvard psychologist, Jerome S. Bruner, presents a three-tiered
model of learning where he points out that every area of
knowledge can be presented and learned in three distinct steps.

14. SYMBOLS
ILLUSTRATIONS
ACTIONS

15. Bruner suggested that a learner proceed from ENACTIVE to the ICONIC and
only after to the SYMBOLIC. The mind is often shocked into immediate
abstraction at the highest level without the benefit of a gradual unfolding.

16. INCREASING
ABSTRACTION
hence …increasing
difficulty

17. SYMBOLIC
ICONIC
ENACTIVE

19. A little of what they read
A bit better if they could hear it
A lot of what they see
A little more of what they
see and hear
A lot more of what they
say and write
And a whole lot
more of what we
do
People are able to…
(learning outcomes)
Define
List,
Describe
Explain
Demonstrate
Apply
Practice
Analyze
Define
Create
Evaluate
People generally
remember…
(learning activities)

21. Active learning would include those
activities that charge our brains and
capacities to remember what we are
experiencing.
Passive learning would include those
activities that people can still learn from,
but not generally as effective as active
learning.
Given this, we should realize that every
human being is different. We as instructors
and educators should be flexible to adapt
to every person’s learning style and seek
out their needs
Verbal
Symbols
Visual Symbols

22. Verbal
Symbols
Visual Symbols
The pattern of arrangement of the bands of experience is not difficulty but the
degree of abstraction – that is the amount of immediate sensory participation that
is involved. For example a picture of a tree is not more difficult to understand
than a dramatization of “Hamlet”. It is simply in itself a less concrete teaching
material than the dramatization.