Cognitive apprenticeship in a CAL-environment for functionally illiterate adults

When cognitive apprenticeship principles are compared with adult learning theories and in particular with learning theories concerning functionally illiterate adults, they have several aspects in common. In order to check these resemblances in practice and to explore at the same time the way in which the cognitive apprenticeship methods can be operationalized in a computer aided learning environment for adult basic education students, a computer program was designed in the domain of arithmetic.This article describes an experiment with this computer program in which the use of the operationalized cognitive apprenticeship methods was studied together with the effects of modelling and coaching on student performance.The results concerning the implementation of modelling and coaching showed that adult basic education students make little use of optional materials in the computer program. As a consequence of this no conclusions can be drawn concerning the effects of modelling and coaching on student performance.

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