Concept proposed by Allan Collins, John Seely Brown, and Susan Newman in the late 80’s. Heavily influenced by Situated learning, the authors propose to solve Transfer learning and to help students acquire the Tacit knowledge involved in real practice by using techniques of Apprenticeship in cognitive domains (math, reading, writing).
They suggest three main elements:
In cognitive domains, like math, a lot of the “action” takes place internally. This is different from traditional apprenticeship domains, like tailoring or shoemaking, and it requires adaptation: explicit protocol analysis, discussed reflections, etc—echoes of The Reflective Practitioner - Donald Schön.
Unlike Situated Learning - Lave and Wenger, the authors still imagine that this apprenticeship would take place in an educational setting, disconnected from the actual community of practice. In fact, to promote Transfer learning, the authors suggest that we should intentionally decontextualize and abstract knowledge so that it can be more readily applied to different contexts.
One idea I like from these papers is the notion of an “abstracted replay”, which can be produced by both teacher and student for interesting comparative discussion. This is part of trying to (artificially?) model and create a microculture of expert practice.
{abstracted replay}: {recap of action, designed to focus attention on critical decision or actions}
In practice, I find myself pretty unconvinced by the case studies of instructional design inspired by cognitive apprenticeship. One exception is Schoenfeld (1983, 1985), who intentionally models solving difficult problems he doesn’t know how to solve, and models good (Polya-like) mathematical problem-solving questions (what am I doing, why am I doing it, how will that help me).
The phrase seems to have been mostly fallen out of the literature by the end of the 90’s, though I notice that many of these ideas are roughly absorbed into NCTM’s mathematical discussion practices. The authors aspired to absorb these ideas in Intelligent tutoring system, but it seems like quite a gulf to me.
Anchored instruction is a related contemporaneous concept. It’s less rooted in the sociological ideas of Situated learning, and the anchored instruction teacher is more a facilitator than a model practitioner.
Q. Three main elements of cognitive apprenticeship?
A. modeling, scaffolding, coaching
Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible. American Educator, 15(3), 6–11. http://www.psy.lmu.de/isls-naples/intro/all-webinars/collins/cognitive-apprenticeship.pdf
Kirschner, P. A., & Hendrick, C. (2020). “Cognitive Apprenticeship” Revisited. American Educator, 44(3), 37. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1272730