Essay on Cognitive Apprenticeship: Gaining Skills Through Guidance and Experience

Introduction

A cognitive apprenticeship comprises a purposeful illustration of skills, combined with coaching and assistance, where teachers create opportunities for the learner to witness and participate in the process while under supervision (Austin, Darling-Hammond, Lit, Martin, & Palincsar, 2016). Comparable to craft apprenticeship, cognitive apprenticeship, through activity and social interaction, strengthens learning in a domain by allowing learners to obtain, develop, and utilize cognitive tools in authentic domain activity.

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Naturally, the focus of cognitive apprenticeship is building on cognitive skills and theoretical comprehensions. Hence, one of the goals of the cognitive apprenticeship model of teaching and learning is to support novice learners in developing their reasoning abilities by making expert thinking in a subject area visible (Blackburn, 2020). Trustworthy, pertinent, and collective tasks, paired with specific teaching techniques, and in creating learning environments that nurture the development of cognitive skills.

Cognitive apprenticeship is designed to account for implicit processes of problem-solving where students can observe, enact, and practice them in three stages of skill acquisition. Learners develop a declarative understanding of the skill in the cognitive stage (Austin et al., 2016). In the associative stage, errors and misapprehensions learned in the cognitive stage are identified and eradicated, while relations between crucial elements concerned with the skill are reinforced. Finally, the learner's skill is refined till executed at an expert level in the autonomous stage.

During the cognitive apprenticeship experience, teachers illustrate how a task is performed as researchers have established that learners better comprehend how to tackle a task when teachers give explicit demonstrations and explanations of the specific skills and strategies (Austin et al., 2016). The teacher should, therefore, provide several support structures to help students accomplish their tasks (Blackburn, 2020). These include different aids for students, including techniques, materials, and tutoring on explicit skills and concepts, and completed tasks that map out what learners are working toward with assistance, sequenced steps, and instruction in achieving the completed task.

Scaffolding is the act of utilizing support plans and procedures such as manipulative and group work, organized by the teacher to help students make progress in the learning process (Austin et al., 2016). As the experts structure the activities to scaffold the tasks of the whole class, they also need to consider individual learners struggling with distinct parts of the process hence require varying types of scaffolding (de Bruin, 2019). The teacher may be required to perform parts of the task that are challenging to the students, which will require the teacher to possess skills of analyzing and assessing student's abilities at the moment. A crucial component of scaffolding is that the teacher is required to provide just enough support to inspire progress. As learners develop more skill, scaffolding is progressively detached through fading, thereby conveying more responsibility to the learner. Scaffolds involve presenting sequenced steps for solving a particular problem or forming a concept map that illustrates the associations among ideas (de Bruin, 2019). Eventually, every one of these support mechanisms provided is removed through de-scaffolding as the learners internalize the ideas and skills.

Coaching involves monitoring students' tasks and offering insights that forge their task performance into that of an expert. In characterizing cognitive apprenticeship, coaching requires the teacher to direct and supervise the work of learners in ways that support the development of their skills and understanding (Saadati, Ahmad Tarmizi, Mohd Ayub, & Abu Bakar, 2015). Hereby, the teacher may organize tasks appropriately to assist the learners' development by observing, posing insightful questions, providing partial answers, and addressing learners' immediate needs.

The principal function of a good coach is to provide constructive feedback, which is specific and concrete in order for the students to clearly understand how to enhance their performance (Austin et al., 2016).

Even before making the critical suggestions, the strengths should be highlighted so that the learners can see what they did right as they discover what they need to improve on.

The teacher should encourage the learners to compare their problem-solving responses with that of other students and an expert as a way to draw attention to the differences for purposes of developing understanding and insight (de Bruin, 2019). This will enable students to build on their problem-solving by comparison.

Collaboration with Cognitive Apprenticeship

Learning group interactions are vital to progressive learning, and cognitive apprenticeship can only be heightened through social interaction with other learners and experts (Austin et al., 2016). Critical aspects of a learning group include providing collaborative work skills, collective problem solving, and displaying numerous roles, which are key in combating misinterpretations and ineffective strategies (Blackburn, 2020). Through group learning, students acquire different problem-solving techniques from their peers as well as practitioners, hence building and developing their different individual skills. The "three before me" technique creates expectations over classroom routines apart from supporting students to be sole proprietors of their interactions, learning, and problems. It also teaches learners to depend on each other for assistance before turning to the teacher.

While providing individual feedback on students' writing, it is also imperative for teachers to highlight the mutual problems of the entire class (Blackburn, 2020). Instead of acting like a teacher and restricting themselves to simply commenting in the margin, experts should act more like editors offering diligent scrutiny by crossing out poor sentences and even paragraphs, rewrite sections and also suggest new ideas that would serve as paradigms for future writing. With this coaching, the class works together as a whole to critique different issues, and eventually, in a cognitive apprenticeship, peers can coach each other, and learners can learn to scaffold their own process (Blackburn, 2020). Over time, the expert then provides less support as with developed expertise, there are few revisions needed, and coaching becomes less directive at this point, with student editors becoming the coaches as they give feedback to student writers.

Teaching Strategies

Exploration strategies involve providing learners room to problem solve on their own. They require an expert to gradually withdraw supports and guide learners to discover, research, and develop hypotheses (Austin et al., 2016). This enables learners to frame problems for themselves within the domain and then take the initiative to solve them.

Practitioners may also assist students in articulating and reflecting on their own thinking processes in order to develop different strengths and identify gaps in their thought processes (Austin et al., 2016). All of these activities are found in an environment where students are stimulated to identify topics, formulate own questions, and pursue their researches.

References

Austin, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Lit, I., Martin, D., & A. Palincsar, A. (2016). The learning classroom (1st ed., p. 234). Annenberg Foundation/Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Blackburn, B. (2020). Classroom Instruction from A to Z: 2nd Edition (Paperback) - Routledge. Routledge.com. Retrieved 23 February 2020, from https://www.routledge.com/Classroom-Instruction-from-A-to-Z-2nd-Edition/Blackburn/p/book/9781138935952.

De Bruin, L. (2019). The use of cognitive apprenticeship in the learning and teaching of improvisation: Teacher and student perspectives. Research Studies In Music Education, 41(3), 261-279. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103x18773110

Saadati, F., Ahmad Tarmizi, R., Mohd Ayub, A., & Abu Bakar, K. (2015). Effect of Internet-Based Cognitive Apprenticeship Model (i-CAM) on Statistics Learning among Postgraduate Students. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0129938. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0129938