Apprenticeship

Source: [|Collins, Brown and Hollum: Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible]

There are 4 aspects of apprenticeship that are important: Modeling, scaffolding, fading and coaching.

Modeling: Teacher demonstrates parts of the task. Scaffolding: Teacher supports the students as they perform parts or all of the task. Fading: Teacher removes support, shifts the responsibility onto the student. Coaching: The role the teacher plays throughout the entire apprenticeship process.

"The interplay of these aspects leads to the apprentice developing self-monitoring and correction skills, as well as the ability to integrate skills and conceptual knowledge as they advance toward expertise of the (teacher)" ([|Apprenticeship Website)]

Observation is a key aspect of the apprenticeship technique, as it provides students with the chance to develop a conceptual model of the task prior to attempting it.

The teacher's thinking must be visible to the student - bring the thought process to the surface, which lets the students observe, enact and practice.

The above 4 aspects of the apprenticeship method are the traditional apprenticeship. The cognitive apprenticeship technique has the following additions: Making the teacher's thinking visible, a real-world aspect (placing the cognitive task into authentic contexts), teacher situates the problems in a diversity of situations.

I see the first three aspects of this technique as "I do, we do, you do". We have talked about this technique in university classes before.

The authors of the source I chose (see above), describe this technique as mainly used for solving problems. However, I also think it is also very applicable to teaching a skill, which is why I chose this technique. In this sense, the business education area that lends itself most to the Apprenticeship technique would be IP. Keying, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, etc are all skills that students can very easily learn through the apprenticeship techniques. First the teacher explains what they are doing and demonstrates the skill, with all eyes on him or her. Then the teacher leads the students through working on an example together. Then finally, the teacher asks the students to do an example on their own, given what they learned in watching the demonstration and working through the example together.

I think the Apprenticeship method is beneficial to students because it allows them to see the process behind the thinking, as long as the teacher explains it while demonstrating the skill. Understanding the reasoning and strategies used in applying knowledge or in learning a skill, while watching the skill being performed is more beneficial to students rather than just being told how to do it.

In continuing with the examples of learning a skill in IP, Product Assessments would be used for evaluating learning by Apprenticeship method. Product assessments allow students to demonstrate competence by creating tangible objects - for instance, a spreadsheet or word document meeting certain criteria. As well, Observation Assessments may be used, for skills such as keying. Observation assessments track student progress over time and provide information about processes that students use as they learn and demonstrate their new knowledge. Examples include checklists (on keying techniques), anecdotal records (teacher comments), informal notes (inferences gathered by teachers).