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4 - Cognitive Apprenticeship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Allan Collins
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
Allan Collins
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Throughout most of history, teaching and learning have been based on apprenticeship. Children learned how to speak, grow crops, construct furniture, and make clothes. But they didn't go to school to learn these things; instead, adults in their family and in their communities showed them how, and helped them do it. Even in modern societies, we learn some important things through apprenticeship: we learn our first language from our families, employees learn critical job skills in the first months of a new job, and scientists learn how to conduct world-class research by working side-by-side with senior scientists as part of their doctoral training. But for most other kinds of knowledge, schooling has replaced apprenticeship. The number of students pursuing an education has dramatically increased in the last two centuries, and it gradually became impossible to use apprenticeship on the large scale of modern schools. Apprenticeship requires a very small teacher-to-learner ratio, and this is not realistic in the large educational systems of modern industrial economies.

Even in modern societies, when someone has the resources and a strong desire to learn, they often hire a coach or tutor to teach them by apprenticeship – demonstrating that apprenticeship continues to be more effective even in modern societies. If there were some way to tap into the power of apprenticeship, without incurring the large costs associated with hiring a teacher for every two or three students, it could be a powerful way to improve schools.

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The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences , pp. 47 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Cognitive Apprenticeship
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816833.005
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  • Cognitive Apprenticeship
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816833.005
Available formats
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  • Cognitive Apprenticeship
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816833.005
Available formats
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