A Cognitive Apprenticeship for Disadvantaged Students.

A framework is described for extending the principles of apprenticeship to teaching such subjects as reading, writing, and mathematics. Such a cognitive apprenticeship is aimed at teaching students the processes experts use to handle complex tasks. Conceptual knowledge and factual knowledge'are illustrated within the contexts in whinh they are used. The proposed framework, comprised of content, method, sequencing, and sociology, is consistent with the goals of compensatory education. The cognitive apprenticeship model is useful for all students, but is particularly effective for disadvantaged, or at-risk, students because learning is embedded in a setting that is more like work, with an authentic connection to students' lives. Examples are given of cognitive apprenticeship programs in an urban middle school in Rochester (New York), and an urban secondary school in Harlem (New York). By giving their students long-term projects that engage them deeply and by constructing an environment embodying the principles of the described framework, these schools have begun fostering cognitive apprenticeship. The two schools' progress should be followed and their methods replicated to move education to a more rational system. One figure and a 25-item list of references are Included. The paper's discussant is Herb Rosenfeld in a taining piece entitled "Reflections from a Workplace for Cognitive Apprenticeship." (SLD) *****************************************************************V***** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** A COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP FOR DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS Allan Collins Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Northwestern University Jan Hawkins Bank Street College Sharon M. Carver University of Rochester This work was supported by the Center for Technology in Education under grant number 1-135562167-A1 from the Office of Educational Research ar4 Improvement, U.S. Department of Education to Bank Street College of Education. U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) AThis document has been reproduced es received from the person or organization originating IL Cl Minor changes have been made to improve (XI reproduction quality is Points al view or opinions stated in this docir 0 293-157 0 91 7 ment do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy z 2 BEST CIIPY AVAIl irn r A COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP FOR DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS Historically there has been a great divide between education for the advantaged (e.g., Latin and geometry) and training for the disadvantaged (e.g., vocational education). As education has become universal, we have extended education for the advantaged to more and mo.e of the population, though with limited success and in watered-down form. But it is difficult for most students to understand why they should be reading Macbeth and learning to multiply fractions, when there is no obvious call for such knowledge in any life they can imagine for themselves. And there is increasing resistance among students to being force-fed an education that seems irrelevant to their lives. Our thesis in this paper is that the changing nature of work in society (e.g., Zuboff, 1988) provides a potential meeting ground where education for the advantaged and disadvantaged can come together in a curriculum in which the educational tasks reflect the future nature of work in society. Wnrk is becoming computer-based and, at the same time, requires more and more ability to learn and think. Hence, a curriculum built around tasks that require learning and thinidng in a computer-based environment will make sense to both advantaged and disadvantaged students and will educate them in ways that make sense for society at large. Only in the last century, and only in industrialized nations, has formal schooling emerged as a widespread method of educating the young. Before schools appeared, apprenticeship was the most common means of learning. Even today, many complex and important skills, such as those required for language use and social interaction, are learned informally through apprenticeship-like methodsthat is, methods not involving didactic teaching but observation, coaching, and successive approximation. The differences between formal schooling and apprenticeship methods are many, but for our purposes, one is most important: in schools, skills and knowledge have become abstracted from their use in the world. In apprenticeship leaming, on the other hand, skills are not only continually in use by skilled practitioners but are instrumental to the accomplishment of meaningful tasks. Said differently, apprenticeship embeds the learning of skills and kncwledge in their social and functional context. This difference has serious implications for the design of instruction for students. Specifically, we propose the development of a new "cognitive apprenticeship" (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989) to teach students the thinking and problem-solving skills involved in school subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. Traditional Apprenticeship To foreshadow those methods and why they are likely to be effective, let us first consider some of the crucial features of traditional apprenticeship (Lave, 1988). First and foremost, apprenticeship focuses closely on the specific methods for carrying out tasks in a domain. 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 and his or her assistants executing (or modeling) the target process, which usually involves a number of different but interrelated subskills. The apprentice then attempts to execute the process with guidance and help from the master (i.e., coaching). A key aspect of coaching is the provision of scaffolding, which is the support, In the form of reminders and help, that the apprentice requires to approximate the execution of the entire composite of skills. Once the learner has a grasp of the target skill, the master reduces (or fades) participation, providing only limited hints and feedback to the learner, who practices by successively approximating smooth execution of the whole skill. From Traditional to Cognitive Apprenticeship Collins, Brown, and Newman (1989) proposed an extension of apprenticeship for teaching subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. We call this rethinking of learning and teaching in school cognitive apprenticeship to amphasize two issues. First, the method is aimed primarily at teaching the processes that experts use to handle complex tasks. Where conceptual and factual knowledge are addressed, cognitive apprenticeship emphasizes their uses in solving problems and carrying out tasks. That is, in cognitive apprenticeship, conceptual and factual knowledge are exemplified and practiced in the contexts of their use. Conceptual and factual knowledge thus are learned in terms of their uses in a variety of contexts, encouraging both a deeper understanding of the meaning of the concepts and facts themselves, and a rich web of memorable associations between them and the problem-solving contexts. It is this dual focus on expert processes and learning in context that we expect to help solve current educational problems. Second, cognitive apprenticeship refers to the focus on learning through guided experience in cognitive skills and processes, rather than physical ones. Although we do not wIsh to draw a major theoretical distinction between the leaming of physical and cognitive skills, there are differences that have practical implications for the organization of teaching and learning activities. Most importantly, traditional apprenticeship has evolved to teach domains in which the process of carrying out target skills is external, and thus readily available to both student and teacher for obsenration, comment, refinement, and correction, and bears a relatively transparent relationship to concrete products. The externalization of relevant processes and methods makes possible such