Review of artice on Cognitive Apprenticeship

The article “Cognitive Apprenticeship as an Instruction Model,” uses two fourth grade classrooms, Ms. Beauchamp’s and Ms. Reed’s, at Cedars Elementary covering the topic of the Great Depression as a way to explain cognitive apprenticeship.
Cognitive apprenticeship practices, along with anchored instruction, learning communities, and in-situ assessment, are educational approaches derived from Situated Learning Theory. “Cognitive apprenticeship methods try to enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction in a way similar to that evident in craft apprenticeship,” as described by Brown, Collins & Duguid. Interestingly, apprenticeship is an old and well-established model for learning. 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 law.
Cognitive apprenticeship seeks to engage learners in real-world scenarios in which they act and interact to achieve useful outcomes. The workplace has a number of strengths as a learning environment: authentic, goal-oriented activities; access to guidance; everyday engagement in problem solving; and intrinsic reinforcement. Cognitive apprenticeship is one example of situated learning in which learners participate in a community of practice that is developed through activity and social interaction in ways similar to that in craft apprenticeships.
Beyond striving to engage learners in activity in real-world situations, meaningful contexts, cognitive apprenticeship is known to embody certain characteristics known as modeling, coaching, scaffolding, reflection, articulation, and exploration.
Modeling in cognitive apprenticeship means showing how a process unfolds and giving reasons why it happens that way. There are two kinds of modeling that can be used in education: 1) modeling of expert performance and 2) modeling of processes in the world. The major responsibilities of the teacher during the modeling stage of cognitive apprenticeship are structuring situations of expert practice and demonstrating the expert’s thinking process in a manner that does not overwhelm the students.
A key component of cognitive apprenticeship is that students learn the cognitive processes in realistic contexts so that they may process their thoughts accordingly in actual situations.
Coaching and scaffolding are two critical components of the cognitive apprenticeship model. These elements are addressed together because they share many characteristics. Some researchers call coaching “the thread running through the entire apprenticeship experience.” Scaffolding, while distinct from coaching, can actually be categorized as a type of coaching.
Although, it is considered a separate component of cognitive apprenticeship, coaching has as much in common with the process of scaffolding. Both involve a teacher providing some type of assistance to a learner to facilitate attainment of a goal. Some researchers call coaching “the process of overseeing the student’s learning. The goal of coaching can be simply summarized as the learner accomplishes the learning goal.
There are six characteristics of the cognitive apprenticeship model, scaffolding if perhaps the best known. Scaffolding is all about a supporting framework. A scaffold is a structure that supports students while they work at a level higher than their ability allows without assistance. There are six elements of scaffolding: the sharing of a specific goal, a whole-task approach, the immediate availability of help, providing an optimal level of help and the conveying of an expert model.
Articulation and reflection are two more components of cognitive apprenticeship practices. They often go hand-in-hand. In terms of cognitive apprenticeship, articulation is described as consisting of two aspects: separating component knowledge and skills to learn them more effectively and, more common verbalizing or demonstrating knowledge and thinking processes in order to expose and clarify them. The goal of reflection is that students have guided opportunities to look back and analyze their individual and group performance and artifacts with an eye toward understanding and improvement.
Exploration in cognitive apprenticeship is pushing students to try out their hypotheses, methods, and strategies with processes similar to those that experts use to solve problems. Students are usually engaged in two kinds of exploration: 1) exploration of the world and 2) exploration of problem solving processes. Through exploration, learners are encouraged to carry out expert problem solving processes on their own.
Cognitive apprenticeship has both opportunities and challenges, as do most educational models. I think if enough thought and time are put into using the strategies challenges can be overcome and cognitive apprenticeship can be very beneficial.