So sad that John has left this world.  He always lit up his corner.  

I knew him as a counselor at ManyPoint Boy Scout Camp and as a leader in his MYF youth group.  I remember him playing his trombone and also playing piano by ear.  So talented.  How can he not be missed?  Good by John.  I will hold all those memories close to my heart.  

My condolences to his wife and children.  I am sure he was a great husband and super dad.  

I came to Vanderbilt in 1981. I was a new assistant professor and like many new profs, full of myself and eager to change the world. I came out of the Kennedy Center one afternoon and someone I knew was standing with someone I didn't know and she introduced me to John. "John Bransford!" I gushed. "I read your paper with Franks when I was in grad school and talked about it in my written qualifying exams. That paper will change cognitive psychology completely." And it did. In what I would come to recognize as John's typical humble style, he downplayed the brilliance of the paper and went on to tell me the story about how he and Jeff came up with the ideas together standing at a bus stop in the raging snow in Minnesota. 

John forgave my gushing first meeting and we became good friends. I also became good friends with Bunny. They threw me a festive baby shower when my daughter was born.

I was so saddened when I heard the news of John's passing.   Even though we knew it was coming, it was still a huge blow to my heart. I owe my academic career to him. I am not alone in that regard.

I met john in 1993 when I just finished my ph.d at Purdue university and was hired as a postdoc fellow at the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt where john was the director.   I never thought that i could create a new and useful idea until I met john.   He did not only greatly impact how I think, but also how i develop my career path.   He was one of the most creative psychologists that the field had produced.   He taught me how to turn problems into golden research opportunities.  For instance, as a new assistant professor at Peabody college, Vanderbilt University, my teaching rating was poor.  I told him that academic career was beyond my reach.  He talked to me for weeks about the nature of the problem, etc.  Our conversations were so inspiring that one day I followed him to the barber shop to continue the conversation while he got hair cut.   I am sorry, john!   He then suggested to create a video about my childhood struggles as a person who grew up during the Chinese cultural revolution era when I lost education from 9 years old to 15 years old, lived in a cave for a year and could not have enough food and medical care.  He asked me to share the struggle stories with my students.  Miracle happened after I shared the story.  Students and I developed emotional bound that actually helped my teaching and their learning about the course content.  My teaching rating improved greatly as a result of improved teacher-student relationship.  We finally conducted an empirical study of this experience and got it published.  This line of work led to a creation of Education For Persistence and Innovation Center at Columbia University in 2018. 

At a personal level, john was incredibly caring and resourceful.   After he offered me the post doc. job at LTC, he said that Vanderbilt never pays moving expenses to any postdocs.   I told him that I was probably the poorest post doc he had ever met.  I showed him my personal checking statement that had only $450 in the checking and 0 in saving.  I told him that I had been living on $450 a month at Purdue as a graduate student for the past 3 years and I earned some money on the side to baby sit my professors' children because as a foreign student, I was not allowed to work off campus legally.   He immediately said: "Do not worry!  We will get you here from Purdue.  I will pay your moving from my endowed chair fund."   That was how I started at vandy!

John, i owe you beyond words can describe! Love you dearly! 

As John’s youngest brother (Rick), I was motivated to major in psychology and took a course in psycholinguistics to see if I could get some sense of John’s research.  One of the main textbooks we used cited John’s research multiple times and, of course, I chose to write a paper about his work. I included in the paper a personal memory of when John demonstrated an example of cognitive bridging enhanced by a single word during a family vacation in Florida. He gave me the sentence “ The haystack was important because the cloth ripped”….which meant nothing to me until he gave the single word “Parachute”! In a second, the meaning of the initial sentence became crystal clear. I was so proud of that paper and grateful that it gave me just a kernel of insight into my brilliant brother’s work!

Rick B

My very first week of graduate school (1985), someone stole my bike. I had been late to class and left the bike unlocked outside the Department of Psychology. Parking at Vanderbilt was terrible even back then, so even though I had an old car, the loss of my bike as a way to get on campus was a real blow. John immediately saw my dismay and invited me to his house to let me borrow one of his family's bikes. That was the first time, over countless times during almost 30 years, that John impacted my life with his warmth and generosity.  

Soon afterward, I overheard some of the other graduate students mention their nickname for John. Vanderbilt had a popular "cognitive-clinical" program in which students could study cognitive psychology and also become licensed therapists. And one of the concepts they were taught was "unconditional positive regard." It means having a sincere belief as a therapist that everyone has the strength and ability to grow. And offering wholehearted acceptance and support to your patients no matter what they say or do. So John's nickname among the students--many of you will not be surprised at all to know--was "Mr. Unconditional Positive Regard." And that is why in our stressful world of earning a Ph.D., every student wanted John to be a member of their doctoral committee.

I was fortunate to have him agree to be on mine, and during graduate school he was invaluable in offering insights about how to explore the question he had so brilliantly and creatively explored earlier in his career: How do we create meaning from language? Little did I know that after graduate school, he would lead me to spend the rest of my career exploring the question he pioneered at the Learning Technology Center: How do we create more meaningful learning environments for kids?

But it was when I became a young mother while working for John that I was faced with another key question: How can I create a meaningful life in which my career and my family strengthen each other? And that is where John's warmth and caring and humor and brilliance and creativity all coalesced into another level of support and encouragement that meant the world to me. As a mentor, a boss, and later my most important client and collaborator, he always championed the value of both career and family, and he went out of his way to help me navigate motherhood and career. For that--and the bicycle--and the unconditional positive regard--I am forever and immensely grateful to him.