Revealing Tacit Knowledge in Cognitive Apprenticeship

The instructional method used in a cognitive apprenticeship environment consists of 4 main phases (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1990):

• Modeling: Expert practice is modeled so that tacit knowledge is revealed.
• Scaffolding: 'Just enough' structure or support is provided for the learner to be able to practice while being challenged.
• Coaching: Experts provide useful feedback for improving practice of learners.
• Fading: Experts withdraw scaffolding and coaching as learners become more competent. 

Cognitive apprenticeship is a model that definitely resonates with some of the e-learning content I've worked on to date. Revealing the social context around information was an important philosophy driving some of the multimedia projects at the Libraries. The idea was to reveal some of the tacit expert knowledge that librarians and other academics on campus have learned over time, but are hidden or obscure to many students, as 'novice academics'. In the higher education context, (academic) information literacy can be considered a core metacognitive skill, like those related to critical reading, writing and mathematics.

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The model of 'Watch it, Do it, Know it', (Darling-Hammond et al.), very closely maps to the design of another module I worked on last semester. Here is a flow chart I created to illustrate how the learner would navigate through that module.

G.A. Reference Training Module Flow Chart

The module was used for training graduate students who help staff the reference desk during evenings and weekends. Although I was aware of some aspects of situated learning and cognitive apprenticeship, I actually didn't intentionally try to map the design of the module to this theory at that time. However, looking back, the match is not too surprising since the training context is very similar to the apprenticeship settings studied by Lave, which partly informed these teaching methods (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1990). If anything, cognitive apprenticeship is even more relevant in the reference work setting, than say a tailor shop, since the nature of the expertise and skill is almost entirely intellectual.

One of the videos showed full time, experienced reference librarians reflecting
on personal strategies for dealing with in-depth reference questions and referrals to subject specialists.

It seems to me that the strength of cognitive apprenticeship methods is in being able to apply them in a variety of contexts, like teaching basic literacy skills for young learners in the K-12 environment, or developing professional practice for working adults. A challenge to using this approach is scalability, since the processes seem very 'high-touch'. Collins, Brown & Newman, writing in the early 1990s were hopeful that computer technologies will play a key role in augmenting the instructor's reach.

It is true that the ability to model expert processes has come a long way – it has never been easier to capture video of expert performance and share it many times at no additional cost. (For example, for the training module above, A Flip video camcorder was used to produce fairly high quality output given the low cost of the technology as well as the low learning curve for learning how to use it. There are also a range of options for free video hosting and broadcasting e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, BlipTV ). Providing scaffolding, in terms of being able to create simple interactive activities or experiences online, is also becoming easier (e.g. tools for designing and delivering quizzes with automated feedback). Given these trends, I imagine that simulations that adequately mimic live coaching experiences will eventually become easier to develop (I think at this point technologies for this purpose still require fairly sophisticated skills in order to develop even very rudimentary designs). Still, the ability to use technology for modelling and scaffolding means that face-to-face or synchronous online meetings can be reserved for the coaching process.

References

Collins, A., Brown, J.S. & Newman, S.E. (1990). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. In L.B. Resnick (E.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Darling-Hammond, L., Austin, K., Lit, I., & Martin, D. (n.d.). Session 8: Watch it, do it, know it: Cognitive Apprenticeship.