Cognitive Apprenticeship

This book defines cognitive apprenticeship as a knowledgeable adult using guided instruction to assist the child in obtaining cognitive and metacognitive processes. The teacher has to use what the children already know in order to help them acquire new information. This mainly comes from the language the teacher uses as well as the instructional strategies. Apprenticeship is a way for children to acquire stronger problem-solving skills and apply them to literacy activities. This master and apprenticeship relationship makes me think of Gee’s same notion of one in the process of an apprenticeship or have mastered one’s discourse. These shared problem-solving interactions allow for the apprentice to see the more skilled individual as an example, and increase their comprehension.

This method encourages students’ behaviors towards the objective by the teacher properly giving feedback. So often I hear of teachers only commenting on the negative, when instead they could potentially increase students learning by reinforcing what the child has done right. This would in turn boost moral and confidence, which would liberate the child to learn on a deeper level.

According to Apprenticeship in Literacy (1998), there are seven principles of an apprenticeship approach to literacy:

Observation and responsive teaching: Teachers observe children’s literacy behavior and design instructional experiences based on children’s strengths and needs.

Modeling and coaching: Teachers use modeling and coaching techniques with clear demonstrations and explicit language.

Clear and relevant language for problem solving: Teachers use language prompts the enable children to plan and initiate cognitive actions for resolving problems during literacy activities.

Adjustable and self-destructing scaffolds: Teachers provide adjustable scaffolds that are removed when they are no longer needed in a particular area.

Structured routines: Teachers provide routine interactions with organizational structures that enable independence.

Assisted and independent work: Teachers provide balanced opportunities for children to work at assisted and independent levels.

and Transfer: Teachers teach for the transfer of knowledge, skills, and strategies across shifting circumstances and for varying purposes.

Each of these principles can help teachers understand what is needed in their classroom when creating lessons and deciding what instructional strategies to use. To help support these concepts, it is important for teachers to be aware of their language usage. It is easy to have a goal or outcome preconceived in our minds, and project that onto our students. However, we must monitor our language for the students’ benefit, and this chapter states that “teachers can monitor their language be asking two simple and important questions: is your language meaningful to the child, and is your language relevant to the task at hand?” If a child does not understand the relevance of a teacher’s language, then often the child will not move to comprehension or independent learning. We cannot expect a child to apply information properly if they do not have the necessary concept knowledge, even though there are teachers that still try to do so. I feel that the example of Jeremy told to highlight the important aspects of the text, even though he did not comprehend all of the information, is a teacher expecting something that Jeremy is unable to do on his own at that time.