ID Meets IT Part 6: The Cognitive Apprentiship

The apprenticeship is likely as old as civilization. A skilled practitioner in a given field takes on a starry-eyed youngster and learns him the tricks of the trade by showing him how its done and cudgeling him til he gets it right. At least was the impression I got from watching the master/pupil relationships on USA network's Kung Fu Theatre as a child. Perhaps a more apt example, however, is the relationship between Almanzo and his father in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy mentioned in a previous post. In that instance, young Almanzo gradually learned the skills of the farmer from his father by "observation, coaching, and successive approximation"  as Collins, Brown, & Newman (1999, p. 453) point out. These early apprenticeships, however, were intended to "transmit complex physical processes and skills" of a very particular field (p. 455). Aside from teachers in a trade or specific professional school, this teaching model poses a problem when the complex skills and processes aren't necessarily tied to a specific trade, or even a physical act like farming or kung fu, but rest more in the cognitive and metacognitive domain, or the realm of thinking and thinking about thinking.

The desire to translate the apprenticeship model from the world of physical trades to the classroom setting is certainly understandable. As Collins et al. point out, the apprenticeship is capable of teaching complex skills without resorting to lengthy practice of isolated subskills" (p. 456), something I'm sure both teachers and students would appreciate. Other cited benefits include increasing relevancy for students by anchoring instruction in authentic settings and supporting students in the achievement of complex and desired skills through careful scaffolding and gradual release. But translating the apprenticeship of old to the classroom requires a new kind of apprenticeship, the cognitive apprenticeship. Under this model:

Apprentices learn these methods through a combination of what Lave calls observation, coaching, and practice, or what we, from the teacher's point of view, call modeling, coaching, and fading. In this sequence of activities, the apprentice repeatedly observes the master executing (or modeling) the target process, which usually involves some different but interrelated subskills

Although the ideal one-to-one apprenticeship model is unlikely to be seen as the primary means of instruction in the modern classroom due to the substantial number of students in a given classroom, and supporting these students in such a way would be unrealistic, I think you'll find aspects of the apprenticeship and situated learning in the classroom of any decent teacher. The sort of coaching has been a part of the repertoire of reading teachers for decades as teachers model reading skills to a small group of students and coach students through the process of reading. The aspects of the apprenticeship  also played a large role in my writing instruction, both before and after my training on Write from the Beginning, which relies heavily on teaching modeling of the writing process and think alouds of complex processes. At the level of higher education, the apprenticeship model was a primary strategy in my teacher education program through a year-long internship with a master teacher. During this internship, observation, reflection, practice, coaching and gradual release from my cooperating teacher was the model used to assist me in developing the complex skills --yes, being a teacher is a complex profession despite the current trend in belittling our field-- required to effectively manage a productive classroom.

So what is technology's role in supporting the apprenticeship model and the benefits to be gain from it? First off, technology has the potential to connect students to true masters in a given field. The elementary teacher is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, making some aspects of the apprenticeship a difficult task. But through video conferencing tools such as Skype or websites such as Shout! students are able to connect with true experts in a given field. Access to online video also provide students now with a wealth of expert models demonstrating or discussing their professions such as this video of writing Mary Pope Osborne discussing the craft of writing for budding young authors and fans of Magic Tree House books (as many of my 4th graders were). One role I particularly see technology playing, especially as 1:1 classrooms begin to emerge, is the use of tutorial software programs for basic skill instruction, practice and assessment (perhaps using the PSI model), thereby freeing up the teacher to work with students in small groups on complex tasks and authentic activities. This would delegate, and in effect automate, basic instructional tasks to computers, and allow teachers to focus their energy on coaching small groups of students at similar skill levels and scaffolding instruction to help them move beyond the basics.

In summary, I think in every good classroom you will find aspects of the apprenticeship model in action, though there are limits given the large pupil-teacher ratio. Modeling and thin- alouds have become pretty standard practice at the elementary level and coaching to a certain extent, though typically more so with needier students as the time a teacher can spend with individual students is limited. Technology has a role in that it can connect students with experts in the field previously inaccessible, or at the very least provide us the opportunity to observe them as I did so often on a Sunday afternoon watching Kung Fu Theater.