This meant I could show students what I do as a writer in real time, thinking out loud and watching their reactions as I typed. This could easily bore them, of course, but with strong energy-fu, old-school touch typing speed, and face-to-face interaction, I can pull it off more often than you might expect. On a good day, they find it fascinating. On one very special occasion each year, I do it for the full period, writing a 400+ word essay from scratch in 40 minutes with no prior knowledge of the prompt. Students have to hold their questions that day, and instead take observation notes, which become fodder for an extended debriefing discussion the next day.
… in traditional apprenticeship, the process of carrying out a task to be learned is usually easily observable. In cognitive apprenticeship, one needs to deliberately bring the thinking to the surface, to make it visible, whether it’s in reading, writing, problem solving. The teacher’s thinking must be made visible to the students and the student’s thinking must be made visible to the teacher. That is the most important difference between traditional apprenticeship and cognitive apprenticeship. Cognitive research, through such methods as protocol analysis, has begun to delineate the cognitive and metacognitive processes that comprise expertise. By bringing these tacit processes into the open, students can observe, enact, and practice them with help from the teacher and from other students. [...]
A TEACHER MODELS GETTING STARTED
Assignment
(Suggested by students)
Write an essay on the topic “Today’s Rock Stars Are More Talented than Musicians of Long Ago.”
THINKING-ALOUD EXCERPT
I don’t know a thing about modern rock stars. I can’t think of the name of even one rock star. How about, David Bowie or Mick Jagger… But many readers won’t agree that they are modern rock stars. I think they’re both as old as I am. Let’s see, my own feelings about this are… that I doubt if today’s rock stars are more talented than ever. Anyhow, how would I know? I can’t argue this… I need a new idea… An important point I haven’t considered yet is… ah… well… what do we mean by talent? Am I talking about musical talent or ability to entertain—to do acrobatics? Hey, I may have a way into this topic. I could develop this idea by…
Oh, wow. Yes. That. Looks like there’s another book I don’t need to write.
The fact that the concept was so fleshed out thirty years ago kind of pisses me off. My teacher training was so the opposite of that (a bunch of student group work nonsense). And I’m not finding apprenticeship familiar to new teachers currently, though strong veterans often seem to have at least a half-baked version they’ve derived from experience. I get a lot of wide-eyed “Yes!” when I share it with them.
Reminds me of Collins’s cognitive apprenticeship.
Oh, wow. Yes. That. Looks like there’s another book I don’t need to write.
The fact that the concept was so fleshed out thirty years ago kind of pisses me off. My teacher training was so the opposite of that (a bunch of student group work nonsense). And I’m not finding apprenticeship familiar to new teachers currently, though strong veterans often seem to have at least a half-baked version they’ve derived from experience. I get a lot of wide-eyed “Yes!” when I share it with them.