Re: cognitive apprenticeship

Naoki Ueno (nueno who-is-at nier.go.jp)
Tue, 20 Jan 1998 06:50:39 +0900

At 1:27 PM 1/19/98 -0500, Bill Barowy wrote:
>At 10:38 PM +0900 1/18/98, Naoki Ueno wrote:

>It would be enlightening to explore Rogoff's 'Apprenticeship in thinking'
>which takes the analytic viewpoint. Rogoff's description of the
>metacognitive role that skilled partners play can be contrasted to Collins'
>cognitive apprenticeship model two ways. (1) Guided participation seems
>also to be like a teaching curriculum in that adults may structure tasks to
>ensure the childs active participation, taking on
>overall management of the situation.

Bill,

Thank you for your articulation.

I have just scanned your mail. Probably, it takes much time to
answer your mail fully.

You are really pyschologist. I am not.

So far, each langauge game is too different.
Let us communicate very gradually.

This time, I will ask only about Rogoff.

I understood Rogoff's definition of Guided participation as you showed.

However, I cannot understand what kind of interaction Rogoff addresses
by the term Guided instruction.

Definitio is definition. The problem is how you analyse the concrete
interaction between a "adult" and a "child".

For example, I think that "structuring tasks" is always a reciprocal
activity. So, it is possible to say that "adult's structring task" is
structured by a child's actions. That is really interactionist view.

If there is no child's display of his/her participation, interesting,
showing understanding, it is imposible for the adult to structure
a task.

In this way, "structuring" task is a kind of coweaving contexts and
the issue of who guides it is, in some sense, a very delicate problem.

If so, what is the meaning of "guided" ?

More generally speaking, "father" or "mother" is constituted by a child.

Without a child, doing father or doing mother is very funny.
That is the true in the case of a child. If he/she is with the same age
friends, he/she is doing a child, it is also funny.

The category "adult" is the same. For example, I cannot become
an "adult" in the interaction with you.

In this way, becoming father, mother, adult is possible only in the
interaction or relation with a child.
So, becoming father, mother, adult and child is mutual accomplishment.

If so, the category father, mother, adult and child is quite dynamic
doing rather than just the lavels of persons.

It is just a general strategy for interaction analysis.
Actually, after that, concrete analysis of interaction should come.

Anyway, I would like to say that developmental and educational
psychologists tend to treat the category such as "father", "mother"
"adult", "child" as the static lavel or attribute of individuals.

After that, researchers observe how that child as "an individual"
solve the "problem" as if interaction is just one of environmental
factors for individual development.

However, even "an individual" can be regarded as mutual accomplishment.
Kathie as the perfect "expert" of Mac as an individual is also
collaboratively, mutually accomplised with "teachers" and "students"
although her object is how to reorganize such mutual constituting
the "expert".

I have to read Rogoff's book much more.
So far, I cannot understand well the relation between her definition of
Guided interaction and the concrete interaction.

My qestion is very simple, for example,
what kind of coweaving contexts or interaction can be regarded
as guided insturction or direct instruction?

Naoki Ueno
NIER, Tokyo