Introduction
COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP THEORY BY Collins, Brown, and Newman in 1989
INTRODUCTION
HISTORY OF COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP.
Cognitive apprenticeship started long time ago, throughout most of history; teaching and learning have been based on apprenticeship. Children learned how to speak, grow crops, construct furniture, and make clothes. But they didn't go to school to learn these things; instead, adults in their family and in their communities showed them how, and helped them do it. Even in modern societies, we learn some important things through apprenticeship: we learn our first language from our families, employees learn critical job skills in the first months of a new job, and scientists learn how to conduct world-class research by working side-by-side with senior Scientists as part of their doctoral training.
Task
TASK
APPRENTICESHIP: Is defined process through which a more experienced person assists a less experienced one by way of demonstration, support, and examples.
Cognitive apprenticeship: Is defined as “learning through guided experience on cognitive and meta cognitive, rather than physical, skills and processes” by Collins et al. (1989, p. 456)
Cognitive apprenticeship is an accurate description of how learning occurs, and is the instructional strategies that have been extracted from these observations of everyday life can be designed into more formal learning contexts with positive effect.
Expert demonstration (modeling) and guidance (coaching) in the initial phases of learning are essential. Learners are challenged with tasks slightly more difficult than they can accomplish on their own and must rely on assistance from and collaboration with others to achieve these tasks advantage of learning by cognitive apprenticeshipas opposed to traditional classroom-based methodsis the opportunity to see the subtle, tacit elementsof expert practice that may not otherwise be explicatedin a lecture or knowledge-dissemination format
Process
PROCESS
COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP is a theory that attempts to bring tacit processes out in the open. It assumes that people learn from one another, through observation, imitation and modeling.
Key Terms: Modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection
Cognitive Apprenticeship
Around 1987, Collins, Brown, and Newman developed six teaching methods — modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration. These methods enable students to cognitive and metacognitive strategies for “using, managing, and discovering knowledge”
MODELING
Experts (usually teachers or mentors) demonstrate a task explicitly. New students or novices build a conceptual model of the task at hand. For example, a math teacher might write out explicit steps and work through a problem aloud, demonstrating her heuristics and procedural knowledge.
COACHING
During Coaching, the expert gives feedback and hints to the novice.
SCAFFOLDING
Scaffolding the process of supporting students in their learning. Support structures are put into place. In some instances, the expert may have to help with aspects of the task that the student cannot do yet.
ARTICULATION
McClellan describes articulation as (1) separating component knowledge and skills to learn them more effectively and, (2) more common verbalizing or demonstrating knowledge and thinking processes in order to expose and clarify them.
This process gets students to articulate their knowledge, reasoning, or problem-solving process in a domain. This may include inquiry teaching (Collins & Stevens, 1982), in which teachers ask students a series of questions that allows them to refine and restate their learned knowledge and to form explicit conceptual models. Thinking aloud requires students to articulate their thoughts while solving problems. Students assuming a critical role monitor others in cooperative activities and draw conclusions based on the problem-solving activities.
REFLECTION
Reflection allows students to “compare their own problem-solving processes with those of an expert, another student, and ultimately, an internal cognitive model of expertise” (p. 483). A technique for reflection could be to examine the past performances of both expert and novice and to highlight similarities and differences. The goal of reflection is for students to look back and analyze their performances with a desire for understanding and improvement towards the behavior of an expert.
EXPLORATION
Exploration involves giving students room to problem solve on their own and teaching students exploration strategies. The former requires the teacher to slowly withdraw the use of supports and scaffolds not only in problem solving methods, but problem setting methods as well. The latter requires the teacher to show students how to explore, research, and develop hypotheses. Exploration allows the student to frame interesting problems within the domain for themselves and then take the initiative to solve these problems.
Evaluation
EVALUATION
Cognitive apprenticeship practices can be applied through the following ways learning in many:
Cognitive apprenticeship encourages authentic activity and assessment. The most important emphases of the learning environment in cognitive apprenticeship are situated learning and the culture of expert practice (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). Learners are engaged in learning activities that are similar to the practices of real-world experts.
Practices of cognitive apprenticeship are motivating and engaging for learners. Cognitive apprenticeship provides students with authentic tasks; it encourages them to think like and to be treated as experts (Collins, 1991). When students are actively engaged in authentic tasks and make discoveries on their own, they are motivated and experience a sense of ownership of their knowledge and tasks.
Cognitive apprenticeship may encourage greater levels of retention and transfer. Learning within the cognitive apprenticeship framework is situated in a context similar to that in which experts actually practice. Situated, contextualized learning enables students to retain their knowledge until they encounter similar situations in the future.
Cognitive apprenticeship may facilitate higher order reasoning. In cognitive apprenticeship practices, students work with teachers and experts who use higher-level thinking processes; they are exposed to these processes through cognitive modeling. After receiving initial stages of support from teacher and experts, students actually explore new ideas and make discoveries using advanced reasoning processes.
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
With the rise of the situated cognition paradigm in cognitive science, cognitive apprenticeship has become increasingly, prominent as a model of instruction. It is felt that the notion of apprenticeship as a model for cognitive development is ideal as it focuses on the active role of