|
We have all seen youth who can spend hours perfecting complicated skateboarding feats, learning new computer games or mastering animation techniques – it is impossible to stop them from learning. Yet these same teens may struggle with learning in a classroom setting. Part of the problem is that classroom learning is often abstract, disconnected from any real-life application or the natural context for using new information.
Learning outside of school, on the other hand, more likely includes learning by doing – with authentic opportunities to use new skills and see the concrete results of their efforts. Most likely there is some coaching from parents, peers or ‘experts’ where the learner is encouraged to try something a little more difficult – just slightly outside their current abilities (the zone of proximal development). A skill is modeled, attempted, practiced with diminishing levels of support and, eventually, mastered by the individual. This is the heart of cognitive apprenticeship and it turns out that this type of learning is well aligned with how humans learn best and with how the teenage brain is wired for developing independence1. Many complex and important life skills (e.g. those needed for language use and social interaction) are already learned naturally through apprenticeship-like methods that don’t involve direct teaching, but rather observation, coaching and successive approximation2.
Apprenticeship is Not a New Concept.
With shifts in society and the introduction of mass secondary education, adolescents have fewer and fewer opportunities to learn side-by-side with an adults in family farms and businesses or by mentoring with professionals in the workplace. The term ‘apprentice’ has been relegated to training for the trades. But “before schools appeared, apprenticeship was the most common means of learning and was used to transmit the knowledge required for expert practice in fields from painting and sculpting to medicine and law3.”
What is Cognitive Apprenticeship?
Cognitive Apprenticeship is a method of teaching aimed primarily at teaching the processes that experts use to handle complex tasks. The focus of this learning-through-guided-experience is on cognitive and metacognitive skills, rather than on the physical skills and processes of traditional apprenticeships. Applying apprenticeship methods to what are largely cognitive skills requires the externalization of processes that are usually carried out internally. Therefore, the thinking and reflection have to be out loud. Observing the processes by which an expert thinks and practices her skills can teach students to learn on their own more skillfully4.
Let Me Do and I Understand: John Abbott on Cognitive Apprenticeship
Why It Works.
Apprenticeship learning lets students use their reasoning with unique models and cases, act on authentic situations and resolve complex, ill-defined problems – that is, the kind of things we want them to be able to do when they get out of school. This learning is typically negotiated rather than prescribed, and it is more effective because concepts “…continually evolve with each new occasion of use, because new situations, negotiations, and activities inevitably recast it in a new, more densely textured form5”. These types of learning opportunities build the kinds of skills needed for the 21st century.
It also works with what we know about how the teenage brain works and respects the purpose of adolescence and its significance as a critical evolutionary adaptation. Adolescent minds are wired to learn by doing for themselves, making experiential learning a natural fit. Teenagers are also undergoing a radical restructuring of their brain’s neural pathways, a reconfiguring that sets the stage for severing dependency and making their own way in the world. Apprenticeship learning aligns with this natural ‘weaning’ – from a heavy dependency on external support in young children to an increasing autonomy in adolescence. And as the young apprentice becomes increasingly less dependent on the expert, they become more confident in their own ability to solve problems. Every skill learnt, every experience internalized, increases the sense of autonomy. The docile student in the traditional transmission-model classroom, however, becomes increasingly dependent on others to tell them what they need to learn and how – and their confidence remains vulnerable, based on the external feedback of a test score or letter grade. This really is getting it wrong for the adolescent learner. It should also be noted that if the opportunities offered by various predispositions are not seized during the early years, then youth may be ill-prepared to take on increased independence in adolescence. For cognitive apprenticeship to be most effective, youth need to have had ongoing opportunities to develop increasing levels of autonomy and build metacognitive skills6. Making adolescence work means laying the groundwork early. |
Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures. It is very likely that our students' brains have physically changed - and are fundamentally different from ours - as a result of how they grew up. Featured Video
Programs at Work
|
1John Abbott. Crazy By Design: Adolescence, A Critical Evolutionary Adaptation. The 21st Century Learning Initiative, 2005.
2Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1990). “Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics”. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. .
3Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). “Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher”, Educational Researcher, 1989; 18 (1), 32-41. .
4Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1990). “Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics”. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. .
5Ibid.
6John Abbott. Crazy By Design: Adolescence, A Critical Evolutionary Adaptation. The 21st Century Learning Initiative, 2005.
2Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1990). “Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics”. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. .
3Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). “Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher”, Educational Researcher, 1989; 18 (1), 32-41. .
4Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1990). “Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics”. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. .
5Ibid.
6John Abbott. Crazy By Design: Adolescence, A Critical Evolutionary Adaptation. The 21st Century Learning Initiative, 2005.
