Allan Collins, John Seely Brown, and Ann Holum make a case for a form of instruction that resembles the former master–apprenticeship relationship. They call this method of instruction cognitive apprenticeship.
Cognitive apprenticeship is a model of instruction that works to make thinking visible.
For learners to learn something, it’s necessary for the teacher to make the reasoning and strategies needed to perform a task explicit.
The authors see four critical aspects of traditional apprenticeship which are also applicable to cognitive apprenticeship:
- Modeling
- Scaffolding
- Fading
- Coaching
The correlation of these aspects helps learners develop self-monitoring and correction skills as well as in integrating the knowledge and skills needed to look critically at their own progress.
Let’s breakdown each step.
Modeling
In modeling an expert demonstrates the parts of the skill, accompanied by explicitly explaining what they are thinking and why they are doing certain things while carrying out a task.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is the support and guidance the expert provides while the learners are carrying out the behavior.
Fading
The support and guidance slowly fade away, as the students become more independent.
Coaching
The final piece that ties the experience together is coaching. This part allows learners to express problems encountered, provide feedback, and learn from other learners..
Differences Between Traditional and Cognitive Apprenticeship
- Visible Learning- In traditional apprenticeship the process of carrying out a learning task is usually easily observable. In cognitive apprenticeship it is necessary to make the thinking involved in abstract tasks visible.
- Relevant Context- Tasks in traditional apprenticeship are presented by teachers that working with a strict curriculum. In cognitive apprenticeship, then, the task is to situate the abstract tasks of the curriculum but in contexts that make sense to students.
- Skill Variety- Skills learned in traditional apprenticeship are specific to the tasks themselves. In cognitive apprenticeship, experts present a wide range of tasks, varying in difficulty, and encourage students to use a variety skills to articulate the elements that are common across tasks.
Social Environment
The social environment offers students access to examples of others at varying degrees of expertise so they can model their behavior against those others and seek advice.
A cognitive apprenticeship learning environments consists of four dimensions:
- Content – Give learners a grounding in facts, concepts, and procedures.
- Subject matter specific concepts, facts, and procedures
- Generally applicable techniques for accomplishing tasks
- General approaches for directing one’s solution process
- Knowledge about how to learn new concepts, facts, and procedures
- Method – Designed to give students the opportunity to observe, engage in, and invent or discover expert strategies in context.
- Modeling a task so students can observe
- Coaching and observing while students perform a task
- Scaffolding support to help the student perform a task
- Encourage students to verbalize their knowledge and thinking
- Reflecting to compare learners performance with others
- Exploration to invite students to pose and solve their own problems
- Sequence – Structured learning but keeps the context of what the learner is doing.
- Focus on conceptualizing the whole task before executing the parts
- Meaningful tasks gradually increasing in difficulty
- Practice in a variety of situations to emphasize broad application
- Sociology- The methods come into their own in a social environment where learners work together with an expert. By repeatedly articulating what they see, their thinking processes become visible.
- Students learn in the context of working on realistic tasks
- Communication about different ways to accomplish meaningful tasks
- Students set personal goals to seek skills and solutions
- Students work together to accomplish their goals
