Cognitive Apprenticeship and Instructional Technology

Abstract : In earlier times, practically everything was taught by apprenticeship: growing crops, running trades, administering governments. Schools are a recent invention that use many fewer teaching resources. But the computer enables us to go back to a resource-intensive mode of education, in a form we call cognitive apprenticeship. As we argue in the earlier paper, cognitive apprenticeship employs the modeling, coaching, and fading paradigm of traditional apprenticeship, but with emphasis on cognitive rather than physical skills. The basic thesis in this paper is that technology enables us to realize apprenticeship learning environments that were either not possible or not cost effective before. Keywords: Education, Teaching methods, Thinking, Computers and education, Learning, Educational technology, Instructional material.