Personalized Learning

Cognitive Apprenticeship

Cognitive apprenticeship practices, along with anchored instruction, learning communities, and in-situ assessment, are educational approaches derived from Situated Learning Theory. These practices strive, first and foremost, to place teaching and learning practices within a rich and varied context that is meaningful and authentic to students. An apprenticeship is distinguished from tutoring, mentoring, coaching, and volunteerism by its focus on interaction that is a specific socially and culturally valued activity at which the adult is more skilled (Tisdale 2001).....

Like the apprentice electrician or the interning future physician, cognitive apprenticeship seeks to engage learners in real-world scenarios in which they act and interact to achieve useful outcomes. The workplace has a number of strengths as a learning environment: authentic, goal-oriented activities; access to guidance; everyday engagement in problem solving; and intrinsic reinforcement (Kerka 1997). What is the context in which Ms. Reed's class is learning about the Great Depression? In what ways does it provide variety, depth, meaning, and authenticity for learners?

• The Great Depression is explored within the context of the students' local community life, past and present.
• This historical period is explored through the personal stories of people from all walks of life and all parts of the country, including Cedarville, as well as through questions originating from the students.
• The multimedia project extends the learning experience beyond the classroom, providing an authentic, goal-oriented service to the local library and community.
• Variety is introduced in learning through tools and artifacts (books, movies, camcorders, computer workstations, journals, photographs, vintage items), activities (reading, writing, discussion, interviewing, designing, producing, presenting), and people (the teacher, the students, the local librarian, the media specialist, the technology specialist, assorted family and community members).
• Students explore ideas in greater depth by revisiting their content questions throughout the project in eclectic ways, collaboratively through peer and group discussion and project construction, and individually through reading, journaling, and other activities.

Modeling

A cognitive modeling strategy, with teachers and competent students serving as cognitive role models, is a key characteristic of cognitive apprenticeships. The models should put their thoughts and reasons into words while explaining and demonstrating certain actions, because students cannot otherwise monitor the thinking process (Meichenbaum, 1977; Shunk, 2000). These think-alouds allow students to build a conceptual model and acquire an integrated set of cognitive and metacognitive skills through processes of observation (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989; Collins, 1991....

A key component of cognitive apprenticeship is that students learn the cognitive processes in realistic contexts so that they may process their thoughts accordingly in actual situations.....

Coaching and Scaffolding

Coaching and scaffolding are two critical components of the cognitive apprenticeship model. These elements are addressed together because they share many characteristics. Although coaching does not enjoy the familiarity of its cousin scaffolding in the research literature, some researchers call it "the thread running through the entire apprenticeship experience" (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991). Scaffolding, while distinct from coaching, can actually be categorized as a type of coaching. In this section we will discuss why this is the case.....

Articulation and Rreflection

Articulation and Reflection are two more hallmarks of cognitive apprenticeship practices. These components are discussed together as they often go hand-in-hand in practice.

Articulation is defined as "the act of giving utterance or expression" (Merriam Webster's, 2001). In terms of cognitive apprenticeship, articulation is described by McLellan as consisting of two aspects: separating component knowledge and skills to learn them more effectively and, more common verbalizing or demonstrating knowledge and thinking processes in order to expose and clarify them. Through articulation, the learners make their learning explicit through language so that community members have a basis of interaction to refine and expand understanding. Articulation can be interwoven in a learning experience through a variety of strategies including discussion, demonstration, presentation, and the exchange of written or other learner-produced artifacts....

In the cognitive apprenticeship model of teaching and learning, reflection is yet another cornerstone activity. The goal of reflection is that students have guided opportunities to look back and analyze their individual and group performance and artifacts with an eye toward understanding and improvement....

Exploration

Independent exploration of student learning occurs naturally in cognitive apprenticeship when coaching and scaffolding are relaxed and fading occurs (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). Exploration is not one of the characteristics of traditional apprenticeships of physical skills and processes because fading of supports could mean that students are already reaching mastery of the skills.

Features of exploration are similar to those found in discovery learning and inquiry-based approaches. Exploration is not merely reading or listening to a teacher presentation but obtaining knowledge for oneself. Nor is it simply students doing what they want to do; they perform directed and guided activities suggested by the teacher. The teacher poses general problems and allows students to move into specific problems of their own, instead of teaching how to solve a problem and providing materials to help students explore. Through exploration and other similar approaches, students discover new knowledge and learn general problem-solving skills (Bruner, 1961; Shunk, 2000).

Concluding Thoughts: Implications of the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model for Teaching and Learning Cognitive apprenticeship is not a linear process occurring once during the teaching and learning process of particular subject-area content; rather, it is a recursive process....